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MfV 


A PRINCESS OF 



& Noucl. 


By WILLIAM BLACK 

AUTHOR OF 

14 LOVE OR MARRIAGE?” 44 KILMENY,” “IN SILK ATTIRE” “THE MONARCH OF MINCING- 
- LANE,” “A DAUGHTER OF HETH,” &c. 



NEW YORK: 

HARPER & BROTHERS,- PUBLISHERS, 

FRANKLIN SQUARE. 

l 8 74' 


Trc 

I c. 

co? V 


William Black’s Novels. 

^ DAUGHTER OF HETH. 8vo, Paper, 50 cents. 

PRINCESS OF THULE . 8vo, Paper, 75 cents. 

/iV SILK ATTIRE. 8vo, Paper, 50 cents. 

KILMENY. 8 vo, Paper, 50 cents. 

LOVE OR MARRIAGE? 8 vo, Paper, 50 cents. 

k 

THE MONARCH OF MINCING-LANE. Illustrated. 8vo, Paper, 50 cts. 
THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON 8vo, Paper, 75 cts. 

Mr. Black has an excellent command of sound and pure idiom, great power of observation, and manifold resources 
of illustrative thought. — Examiner, London. 

Mr. Black’s novels are always clever. — Spectator, London. 


Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

ON Harper & Brothers will send any of the above works by mail, postage prepaid, to any) 
part of the United States, on receipt of the price. 

Bequest 

Albert Adsit Clemons 
Aug. 24, 1938 
(Not available for exchange) 




c 


A PRINCESS OF THULE 


PA R 

CHAPTER I. 

“LOCHABER NO MORE.” 

O N a small headland of the distant 
island of Lewis an old man stood 
looking out on a desolate waste of rain- 
beaten sea. It was a wild and a wet 
day. From out of the louring south- 
west fierce gusts of wind were driving 
up volumes and flying rags of clouds, 
and sweeping onward at the same time 
the gathering waves that fell hissing and 
thundering on the shore. Far as the eye 
could reach the sea and the air and the 
sky seemed to be one indistinguishable 
mass of whirling and hurrying vapor, as 
if beyond this point there were no more 
land, but only wind and water, and the 
confused and awful voices of their strife. 

The short, thick-set, powerfully-built 
man who stood on this solitary point 
paid little attention to the rain that ran 
off the peak of his sailor’s cap or to the 
gusts of wind that blew about his bushy 
gray beard. He was still following, with 
an eye accustomed to pick out objects 
far at sea, one speck of purple that was 
now fading into the gray mist of the 
rain ; and the longer he looked the less 
it became, until the mingled sea and sky 
showed only the smoke that the great 
steamer left in its wake. As he stood 
there, motionless and regardless of ev- 
erything around him, did he cling to the 
fancy that he could still trace out the 
path of the vanished ship ? A little while 
before it had passed almost close to him. 
He had watched it steam out of Storno- 
way harbor. As the sound of the en- 
gines came nearer and the big boat went 
by, so that he could have almost called 
to it, there was no sign of emotion on 
the hard and stern face, except, perhaps, 
that the lips were held firm and a sort 
of frown appeared over the eyes. He 
saw a tiny white handkerchief being 
waved to him from the deck of the ves- 
sel ; and he said, almost as though he 


T I. 

were addressing some one there, “My 
good little girl !” 

But in the midst of that roaring of the 
sea and the wind how could any such 
message be delivered ? And already the 
steamer was away from the land, stand- 
ing out to the lonely plain of waters, and 
the sound of the engines had ceased, 
and the figures on the deck had grown 
faint and visionary. But still there was 
that one speck of white visible ; and the 
man knew that a pair of eyes that had 
many a time looked into his own — as if 
with a faith that such intercommunion 
could never be broken — were now try- 
ing, through overflowing and blinding 
tears, to send him a last look of farewell. 

The gray mists of the rain gathered 
within their folds the big vessel and all 
the beating hearts it contained, and the 
fluttering of that little token disappeared 
with it. All that remained was the sea, 
whitened by the rushing of the wind 
and the thunder of waves on the beach. 
The man, who had been gazing so long 
down into the south-east, turned his face 
landward, and set out to walk over a 
tract of wet grass and sand toward a 
road that ran near by. There was a 
large wagonette of varnished oak and a 
pair of small, powerful horses waiting 
for him there ; and having dismissed the 
boy who had been in charge, he took 
the reins and got up. But even yet the 
fascination of the sea and of that sad 
farewell was upon him, and he turned 
once more, as if, now that sight could 
yield him no further tidings, he would 
send her one more word of good-bye. 
“My poor little Sheila!” That was all 
he said; and then he turned to the 
horses and sent them on, with his head 
down to escape the rain, and a look on 
his face like that of a dead man. 

As he drove through the town of 
Stornoway the children playing within 
the shelter of the cottage doors called to 

5 


6 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


each other in a whisper, and said, “That 
is the King of Borva.” 

But tlie elderly people said to each 
other, with a shake of the head, “ It iss a 
bad day, this day, for Mr. Mackenzie, 
that he will be going home to an empty 
house. And it will be a ferry bad thing 
for the poor folk of Borva, and they will 
know a great difference, now that Miss 
Sheila iss gone away, and there iss no- 
body — not anybody at all — left in the 
island to tek the side o’ the poor folk.” 

He looked neither to the right nor to 
the left, though he was known to many 
of the people, as he drove away from the 
town into the heart of the lonely and 
desolate land. The wind had so far 
died down, and the rain had consid- 
erably lessened, but the gloom of the 
sky was deepened by the drawing on of 
the afternoon, and lay heavily over the 
dreaiy wastes of moor and hill. What 
a wild and dismal country was this 
which lay before and all around him, 
now that the last traces of human occu- 
pation were passed ! There was not a 
cottage, not a stone wall, not a fence, to 
break the monotony of the long undula- 
tions of moorland, which in the distance 
rose into a series of hills that were black 
under the darkened sky. Down from 
those mountains, ages ago, glaciers had 
slowly crept to eat out hollows in the 
plains below ; and now in those hollows 
were lonely lakes, with not a tree to 
break the line of their melancholy shores. 
Everywhere around were the traces of 
the glacier-drift — great gray boulders of 
gneiss fixed fast into the black peat-moss 
or set amid the browns and greens of the 
heather. The only sound to be heard in 
this wilderness of rock and morass was 
the rushing of various streams, rain- 
swollen and turbid, that plunged down 
their narrow channels to the sea. 

The rain now ceased altogether, but 
the mountains in the far south had grown 
still darker, and to the fisherman pass- 
ing by the coast it must have seemed as 
though the black peaks were holding 
converse with the louring clouds, and 
that the silent moorland beneath was 
waiting for the first roll of the thunder. 
The man who was driving along this 


lonely route sometimes cast a glance 
down toward this threatening of a storm, 
but he paid little heed to it. The reins 
lay loose on the backs of the horses, 
and at their own pace they followed, 
hour after hour, the rising and falling 
road that led through the moorland and 
past the gloomy lakes. He may have 
recalled mechanically the names of those 
stretches of water — the Lake of the Sheil- 
ing, the Lake of the Oars, the Lake of 
the Fine Sand, and so forth — to measure 
the distance he had traversed; but he 
seemed to pay little attention to the ob- 
jects around him, and it was with a 
glance of something like surprise that 
he suddenly found himself overlooking 
that great sea-loch on the western side 
of the island in which was his home. 

He drove down the hill to the solitary 
little inn of Garra-na-hina. At the door, 
muffled up in a warm woolen plaid, 
stood a young girl, fair-haired, blue- 
eyed, and diffident in look. 

“Mr. Mackenzie,” she said, with that 
peculiar and pleasant intonation that 
marks the speech of the Hebridean who 
has been taught English in the schools, 
“it wass Miss Sheila wrote to me to 
Suainabost, and she said I might come 
down from Suainabost and see if I can 
be of any help to you in the house.” 

The girl was crying, although the blue 
eyes looked bravely through the tears 
as if to disprove the fact. 

“Ay, my good lass,” he said, putting 
his hand gently on her head, “and it 
wass Sheila wrote to you ?” 

“Yes, sir, and I hef come down from 
Suainabost.” 

“ It is a lonely house you will be going 
to,” he said absently. 

“ But Miss Sheila said I wass — I wass 
to-;— ” But here the young girl failed 
in her effort to explain that Miss Sheila 
had asked her to go down to make the 
house less lonely. The elderly man in 
the wagonette seemed scarcely to notice 
that she was crying : he bade her come 
up beside him; and when he had got 
her into the wagonette he left some mes- 
sage with the innkeeper, who had come 
to the door, and drove off again. 

I They drove along the high land that 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


7 


overlooks a portion of Loch Roag, with 
its wonderful network of islands and 
straits, and then they stopped on the 
lofty plateau of Callernish, where there 
was a man waiting to take the wagonette 
and horses. 

“ And you would be seeing Miss Sheila 
away, sir?” said the man ; ‘‘and it wass 
Duncan Macdonald will say that she will 
not come back no more to Borva.” 

The old man with the big gray beard 
only frowned and passed on. He and 
the girl made their way down the side 
of the rocky hill to the shore, and here 
there was an open boat awaiting them. 
When they approached, a man consider- 
ably over six feet in height, keen-faced, 
gray-eyed, straight-limbed and sinewy in 
frame, jumped into the big and rough 
boat and began to get ready for their de- 
parture. There was just enough wind to 
catch the brown mainsail, and the King 
of Borva took the tiller, his henchman 
sitting down by the mast. And no soon- 
er had they left the shore and stood out 
toward one of the channels of this arm 
of the sea, than the tall, spare keeper 
began to talk of that which made his 
master’s eye grow dark. ‘‘Ah, well,” 
he said, in the plaintive drawling of his 
race, “ and it iss an empty house you will 
be going to, Mr. Mackenzie ; and it iss 
a bad thing for us all that Miss Sheila 
hass gone away; and it iss many’s ta 
time she will hef been wis me in this very 
boat — ” 

“ — you, Duncan Macdon- 

ald !” cried Mackenzie, in an access of 
fury, “ what will you talk of like that ? 
It iss every man, woman and child on 
the island will talk of nothing but Sheila ! 
I will drive my foot through the bottom 
of the boat if you do not hold your 
peace !” 

The tall gillie patiently waited until 
his master had exhausted his passion, 
and then he said, as if nothing had oc- 
curred, ‘‘And it will not do much good, 
Mr. Mackenzie, to tek ta name o’ God 
in vain ; and there will be ferry much 
more of that now since Miss Sheila iss 
gone away, and there will be much more 
of trinking in ta island, and it will be a 
great difference, mirover. And she will 


be so far away that no one will see her 
no more — far away beyond ta Sound of 
Sleat, and far away beyond Oban, as I 
hef heard people say. And what will 
she do in London, when she has no boat 
at all, and she will never go out to ta 
fishing ? And I will hear people say that 
you will walk a whole day and never 
come to ta sea, and what will Miss Sheila 
do for that ? And she will tame no more 
o’ ta wild-ducks’ young things, and she 
will find out no more o’ ta nests in the 
rocks, and she will hef no more horns 
when the deer is killed, and she will go 
out no more to see ta cattle swim across 
Loch Roag when they go to ta sheilings. 
It will be all different, all different, now ; 
and she will never see us no more. And 
it iss as bad as if you wass a poor man, 
Mr. Mackenzie, and had to let your sons 
and your daughters go away to America, 
and never come back no more. And 
she ta only one in your house ! And it 
wass the son o’ Mr. Macintyre of Suth- 
erland he would hef married her, and 
come to live on ta island, and not hef 
Miss Sheila go away among strangers 
that doesna ken her family, and will put 
no store by her, no more than if she wass 
a fisherman’s lass. It wass Miss Sheila 
herself had a sore heart tis morning when 
she went away ; and she turned and she 
looked at Borva as the boat came away, 
and I said, Tis iss the last time Miss 
Sheila will be in her boat, and she will 
not come no more again to Borva.” 

Mr. Mackenzie heard not one word or 
syllable of all this. The dead, passion- 
less look had fallen over the powerful 
features, and the deep-set eyes were 
gazing, not on the actual Loch Roag 
before them, but on the stormy sea that 
lies between Lewis and Skye, and on a 
vessel disappearing in the midst of the 
rain. It was by a sort of instinct that 
he guided this open boat through the 
channels, which were now getting broad- 
er as they neared the sea, and the tall 
and grave-faced keeper might have kept 
up his garrulous talk for hours without 
attracting a look or a word. 

It was now the dusk of the evening, 
and wild and strange indeed was the 
scene around the solitary boat as it 


3 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


slowly moved along. Large islands — so 
large that any one of them might have 
been mistaken for the mainland — lay 
over the dark waters of the sea, remote, 
untenanted and silent. There were no 
white cottages along these rocky shores ; 
only a succession of rugged cliffs and 
sandy bays, but half mirrored in the 
sombre water below. Down in the south 
the mighty shoulders and peaks of Suai- 
nabhal and its sister mountains were 
still darker than the darkening sky ; and 
when at length the boat had got well 
out from the network of islands and 
fronted the broad waters of the Atlantic, 
the great plain of the western sea seem- 
ed already to have drawn around it the 
solemn mantle of the night. 

“Will you go to Borvabost, Mr. Mac- 
kenzie, or will we run her into your own 
house ?” asked Duncan — Borvabost be- 
ing the name of the chief village on the 
island. 

“ I will not go on to Borvabost,” said 
the old man peevishly. “Will they not 
have plenty to talk about at Borvabost ?” 

“And it iss no harm tat ta folk will 
speak of Miss Sheila,” said the gillie 
with some show of resentment: “it iss 
no harm tey will be sorry she is gone 
away — no harm at all, for it wass many 
things tey had to thank Miss Sheila for ; 
and now it will be all ferry different — ” 

“ I tell you, Duncan Macdonald, to 
hold your peace!” said the old man, 
with a savage glare of the deep-set eyes ; 
and then Duncan relapsed into a sulky 
silence and the boat held on its way. 

In the gathering twilight a long gray 
curve of sand became visible, and into 
the bay thus indicated Mackenzie turned 
his small craft. This indentation of the 
island seemed as blank of human occu- 
pation as the various points and bays 
they had passed, but as they neared the 
shore a house came into sight, about 
half-way up the slope rising from the sea 
to the pasture-land above, 'fhere was 
a small stone pier jutting out at one por- 
tion of the bay, where a mass of rocks 
was imbedded in the white sand; and 
here at length the boat was run in, and 
Mackenzie helped the young girl ashore. 

The two of them, leaving the gillie to 


moor the little vessel that had brought 
them from Callernish, went silently to- 
ward the shore, and up the narrow road 
leading to the house. It was a square, 
two-storied substantial building of stone, 
but the stone had been liberally oiled to 
keep out the wet, and the blackness 
thus produced had not a very cheerful 
look. Then, on this particular evening 
the scant bushes surrounding the house 
hung limp and dark in the rain, and 
amid the prevailing hues of purple, blue- 
green and blue the bit of scarlet coping 
running round the black house was whol- 
ly ineffective in relieving the general im- 
pression of dreariness and desolation. 

The King of Borva walked into a 
large room, which was but partially lit 
by two candles on the table and by the 
blaze of a mass of peats in the stone 
fireplace, and threw himself into a big 
easy-chair. Then he suddenly seemed 
to recollect his companion, who was 
timidly standing near the door, with her 
shawl still round her head. 

“Mairi,” he said, “go and ask them to 
give you some dry clothes. Your box it 
will not be here for half an hour yet.” 
Then he turned to the fire. 

“But you yourself, Mr. Mackenzie, 
you will be ferry wet — ” 

“Never mind me, my lass: go and 
get yourself dried.” 

“But it wass Miss Sheila,” began the 
girl diffidently — “it wass Miss Sheila 
asked me — she asked me to look after 
you, sir — ” 

With that he rose abruptly, and ad- 
vanced to her and caught her by the 
wrist. He spoke quite quietly to her, 
but the girl’s eyes, looking up at the 
stern face, were a trifle frightened. 

“You are a ferry good little girl, Mairi,” 
he said slowly, “ and you will mind what 
I say to you. You will do what you like 
in the house, you will take Sheila’s place 
as much as you like, but you will mind 
this — not to mention her name, not once. 
Now go away, Mairi, and find Scarlett 
Macdonald, and she will give you some 
dry clothes ; and you will tell her to send 
Duncan down to Borvabost, and bring 
up John the Piper and Alister-nan-Each, 
and the lads of the Nighea7i dubh t if 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


9 


they are not gone home to Habost yet. 
But it iss John the Piper must come 
directly.” 

The girl went away to seek counsel of 
Scarlett Macdonald, Duncan’s wife, and 
Mr. Mackenzie proceeded to walk up 
and down the big and half-lit chamber. 
Then he went to a cupboard, and put 
out on the table a number of tumblers 
and glasses, with two or three odd-look- 
ing bottles of Norwegian make, consist- 
ing of four semicircular tubes of glass 
meeting at top and bottom, leaving the 
centre of the vessel thus formed open. 
He stirred up the blazing peats in the 
fireplace. He brought down from a 
shelf a box filled with coarse tobacco, 
and put it on the table. But he was evi- 
dently growing impatient, and at last he 
put on his cap again and went out into 
the night. 

The air blew cold in from the sea, and 
whistled through the bushes that Sheila 
had trained about the porch. There was 
no rain now, but a great and heavy dark- 
ness brooded overhead, and in the silence 
he could hear the breaking of the waves 
along the hard coast. But what was this 
other sound he heard, wild and strange 
in the stillness of the night — a shrill and 
plaintive cry that the distance softened 
until it almost seemed to be the calling 
of a human voice ? Surely those were 
words that he heard, or was it only that 
the old, sad air spoke to him ? — 

For Lochaber no more, Lochaber no more. 

Maybe to return to Lochaber no more. 

That was the message that came to him 
out of the darkness, and it seemed to 
him as if the sea and the night and the 
sky were wailing over the loss of his 
Sheila. He walked away from the house 
and up the hill behind. Led by the 
sound of the pipes, that grew louder and 
more unearthly as he approached, he 
found himself at length on a bit of high 
table-land overlooking the sea, where 
Sheila had had a rude bench of iron and 
wood fixed into the rock. On this bench 
sat a little old man, humpbacked and 
bent, and with long white hair falling 
down to his shoulders. He was playing 
the pipes — not wildly and fiercely, as if 
he were at a drinking-bout of the lads I 


come home from the Caithness fishing, 
nor yet gayly and proudly, as if he were 
marching at the head of a bridal-pro- 
cession, but slowly, mournfully, monot- 
onously, as though he were having the 
pipes talk to him. 

Mackenzie touched him on the shoul- 
der, and the old man started. “ Is it 
you, Mr. Mackenzie ?” he said in Gaelic. 
“ It is a great fright you have given me.” 

“ Come down to the house, John. The 
lads from Habost and Alister, and some 
more will be coming ; and you will get 
a ferry good dram, John, to put wind in 
the pipes.” 

“ It is no dram I am thinking of, Mr. 
Mackenzie,” said the old man. ‘‘And 
you will have plenty of company with- 
out me. But I will come down to the 
house, Mr. Mackenzie — oh yes, I will 
come down to the house — but in a little 
while I will come to the house.” 

Mackenzie turned from him with a 
petulant exclamation, and went along 
and down the hill rapidly, as he could 
hear voices in the darkness. He had 
just got into the house when his visitors 
arrived. The door of the room was 
opened, and there appeared some six or 
eight tall and stalwart men, mostly with 
profuse brown beards and weather-beat- 
en faces, who advanced into the chamber 
with some show of shyness. Mackenzie 
offered them a rough and hearty wel- 
come, and as soon as their eyes had got 
accustomed to the light bade them help 
themselves to the whisky on the table. 
With a certain solemnity each poured 
out a glass and drank “ Shlainte /” to 
his host as if it were some funeral rite. 
But when he bade them replenish their 
glasses, and got them seated with their 
faces to the blaze of the peats, then the 
flood of Gaelic broke loose. Had the 
wise little girl from Suainabost warned 
these big men ? There was not a word 
about Sheila uttered. All their talk was 
of the reports that had come from Caith- 
ness, and of the improvements of the 
small harbor near the Butt, and of the 
black sea-horse that had been seen in 
Loch Suainabhal, and of some more 
sheep having been found dead on the 
Pladda Isles, shot by the men of the 


IO 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


English smacks. Pipes were lit, the 
peats stirred up anew, another glass or 
two of whisky drunk, and then, through 
the haze of the smoke, the browned 
faces of the men could be seen in eager 
controversy, each talking faster than the 
other, and comparing facts and fancies 
that had been brooded over through 
solitary nights of waiting on the sea. 
Mackenzie did not sit down with them : 
he did not even join them in their atten- 
tion to the curious whisky-flasks. He 
paced up and down the opposite side of 
the room, occasionally being appealed to 
with a story or a question, and show- 
ing by his answers that he was but 
vaguely hearing the vociferous talk of 
his companions. At last he said, “Why 
the teffle does not John the Piper come ? 
Here, you men — you sing a song, quick ! 
None of your funeral songs, but a good 
brisk one of trinking and fighting.” 

But were not nearly all their songs — 
like those of all dwellers on a rocky and 
dangerous coast — of a sad and sombre 
hue, telling of maidens whose lovers 
were drowned, and of wives bidding 
farewell to husbands they were never to 
see again ? Slow and mournful are the 
songs that the northern fishermen sing 
as they set out in the evening, with the 
creaking of their long oars keeping time 
to the music, until they get out beyond 
the shore to hoist the red mainsail and 
catch the breeze blowing over from the 
regions of the sunset. Not one of these 
Habost fishermen could sing a brisk 
song, but the nearest approach to it was 
a ballad in praise of a dark-haired girl, 
which they, owning the Nighea,7i dubh t 
were bound to know. And so one young 
fellow began to sing, “ Mo Nighean dubh 
d’fhas boidheach dubh, mo Nighean 
dubh na treig mi,”* in a slow and dole- 
ful fashion, and the others joined in the 
chorus with a like solemnity. In order 
to keep time, four of the men followed 
the common custom of taking a pocket 
handkerchief (in this case an immense 
piece of brilliant red silk, which was 
evidently the pride of its owner) and 

* “ My black-haired girl, my pretty girl, my black- 
haired girl, don't leave me.” Nighean dubh is pro- 
nounced Nyean du. 


holding it by the four corners, letting it 
slowly rise and fall as they sang. The 
other three men laid hold of a bit of 
rope, which they used for the same pur- 
pose. “ Mo Nighean dubh,” unlike most 
of the Gaelic songs, has but a few verses ; 
and as soon as they were finished the 
young fellow, who seemed pleased with 
his performances, started another ballad. 
Perhaps he had forgotten his host’s in- 
junction, perhaps he knew no merrier 
song, but at any rate he began to sing 
the “ Lament of Monaltrie.” It was one 
of Sheila’s songs. She had sung it the 
night before in this very room, and her 
father had listened to her describing the 
fate of young Monaltrie as if she had 
been foretelling her own, and scarcely 
dared to ask himself if ever again he 
should hear the voice that he loved so 
well. He could not listen to the song. 
He abruptly left the room, and went out 
once more into the cool night-air and the 
darkness. But even here he was not 
allowed to forget the sorrow he had been 
vainly endeavoring to banish, for in the 
far distance the pipes still played the 
melancholy wail of Lochaber. 

Lochaber no more ! Lochaber no more ! 

— that was the only solace brought him 
by the winds from the sea; and there 
were tears running down the hard gray 
face as he said to himself, in a broken 
voice, “Sheila, my little girl, why did 
you go away from Borva ?” 


CHAPTER II. 

THE FAIR-HAIRED STRANGER. 

“Why, you must be in love with her 
yourself!” 

“ I in love with her ? Sheila and I are 
too old friends for that !” 

The speakers were two young men 
seated in the stern of the steamer Clans- 
man as she ploughed her way across the 
blue and rushing waters of the Minch. 
One of them was a tall young fellow of 
three-and-twenty, with fair hair and light 
blue eyes, whose delicate and mobile 
features were handsome enough in their 
way, and gave evidence of a nature at 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


once sensitive, nervous and impulsive. I 
He was clad in light gray from head to 
heel — a color that suited his fair com- 
plexion and yellow hair ; and he lounged 
about the white deck in the glare of the 
sunlight, steadying himself from time to 
time as an unusually big wave carried 
the Clansman aloft for a second or two, 
and then sent her staggering and groan- 
ing into a hissing trough of foam. Now 
and again he would pause in front of his 
companion, and talk in a rapid, playful, 
and even eloquent fashion for a minute 
or two ; and then, apparently a trifle an- 
noyed by the slow and patient attention 
which greeted his oratorical efforts, would 
start off once more on his unsteady jour- 
ney up and down the white planks. 

The other was a man of thirty-eight, 
of middle height, sallow complexion and 
generally insignificant appearance. His 
hair was becoming prematurely gray. 
He rarely spoke. He was dressed in a 
suit of rough blue cloth, and indeed 
looked somewhat like a pilot who had 
gone ashore, taken to study and never 
recovered himself. A stranger would 
have noticed the tall and fair young man 
who walked up and down the gleaming 
deck, evidently enjoying the brisk breeze 
that blew about his yellow hair, and the 
sunlight that touched his pale and fine 
face or sparkled on his teeth when he 
laughed, but would have paid little at- 
tention to the smaller, brown-faced, gray- 
haired man, who lay back on the bench 
with his two hands clasped round his 
knee, and with his eyes fixed on the 
southern heavens, while he murmured to 
himself the lines of some ridiculous old 
Devonshire ballad or replied in mono- 
syllables to the rapid and eager talk of 
his friend. 

Both men were good sailors, and they 
had need to be, for although the sky 
above them was as blue and clear as the 
heart of a sapphire, and although the 
sunlight shone on the decks and the 
rigging, a strong north-easter had been 
blowing all the morning, and there was 
a considerable sea on. The far blue 
plain was whitened with the tumbling 
crests of the waves, that shone and 
sparkled in the sun, and ever and anon 


1 1 

a volume of water would strike the Clans- 
man’s bow, rise high in the air with the 
shock, and fall in heavy showers over 
the forward decks. Sometimes, too, a 
wave caught her broadside, and sent a 
handful of spray over the two or three 
passengers who were safe in the stern ; 
but the decks here remained silvery and 
white, for the sun and wind speedily 
dried up the traces of the sea-showers. 

At length the taller of the young men 
came and sat down by his companion : 
“ How far to Stornoway yet ?” 

“ An hour.” 

'* By Jove, what a distance ! All day 
yesterday getting up from Oban to Skye, 
all last night churning our way up to 
Loch Gair, all to-day crossing to this 
outlandish island, that seems as far away 
as Iceland ; — and for what ?” 

“But don’t you remember the moon- 
light last night as we sailed by the Cu- 
chullins ? And the sunrise this morn- 
ing as we lay in Loch Gair ? Were not 
these worth coming for?” 

“ But that was not what you came for, 
my dear friend. No. You came to 
carry off this wonderful Miss Sheila of 
yours, and of course you wanted some- 
body to look on ; arid here I am, ready 
to carry the ladder and the dark lantern 
and the marriage-license. I will saddle 
your steeds for you and row you over 
lakes, and generally do anything to help 
you in so romantic an enterprise.” 

“It is very kind of you, Lavender,” 
said the other with a smile, “but such 
adventures are not for old fogies like me. 
They are the exclusive right of young 
fellows like you, who are tall and well- 
favored, have plenty of money and good 
spirits, and have a way with you that 
all the world admires. Of course the 
bride will tread a measure with you. Of 
course all the bridesmaids would like to 
see you marry her. Of course she will 
taste the cup you offer her. Then a 
word in her ear, and away you go as if 
it were the most natural thing in the 
world, and as if the bridegroom was a 
despicable creature merely because God 
had only given him five feet six inches. 
But you couldn’t have a Lochinvar five 
feet six.” 


12 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


The younger man blushed like a girl 
and laughed a little, and was evidently 
greatly pleased. Nay, in the height of 
his generosity he began to protest. He 
would not have his friend imagine that 
women cared only for stature and good 
looks. There were other qualities. He 
himself had observed the most singular 
conquests made by men who were not 
good-looking, but who had a certain fas- 
cination about them. His own experi- 
ence of women was considerable, and 
he was quite certain that the best women, 
now — the sort of women whom a man 
would respect — the women who had 
brains — 

And so forth and so forth. The other 
listened quite gravely to these well- 
meant, kindly, blundering explanations, 
and only one who watched his face nar- 
rowly could have detected in the brown 
eyes a sort of amused consciousness of 
the intentions of the amiable and in- 
genuous youth. 

“ Do you really mean to tell me, In- 
gram,” continued Lavender in his rapid 
and impetuous way — “ do you mean to 
tell me that you are not in love with this 
Highland princess ? For ages back you 
have talked of nothing but Sheila. How 
many an hour have I spent in clubs, up 
the river, down at the coast, everywhere, 
listening to your stories of Sheila, and 
your praises of Sheila, and your descrip- 
tions of Sheila ! It was always Sheila, 
and again Sheila, and still again Sheila. 
But, do you know, either you exagger- 
ated or I failed to understand your 
descriptions; for the Sheila I came to 
construct out of your talk is a most in- 
congruous and incomprehensible crea- 
ture. First, Sheila knows about stone 
and lime and building ; and then I sup- 
pose her to be a practical young woman, 
who is a sort of overseer to her father. 
But Sheila, again, is romantic and mys- 
terious, and believes in visions and 
dreams ; and then I take her to be an 
affected school-miss. But then Sheila 
can throw a fly and play her sixteen- 
pounder, and Sheila can adventure upon 
the lochs in an open boat, managing the 
sail herself ; and then I find her to be a 
tom-boy. But, again, Sheila is shy and 


rarely speaks, but looks unutterable* 
things with her soft and magnificent 
eyes ; and what does that mean but that 
she is an ordinary young lady, who has 
not been in society, and who is a little 
interesting, if a little stupid, while she is 
unmarried, and who after marriage calm- 
ly and complacently sinks into the dull 
domestic hind, whose only thought is of 
butchers’ bills and perambulators ?” 

This was a fairly long speech, but it 
was no longer than many which Frank 
Lavender was accustomed to utter when 
in the vein for talking. His friend and 
companion did not pay much heed. His 
hands were still clasped round his knee, 
his head leaning back, and all the an- 
swer he made was to repeat, apparently 
to himself, these not very pertinent lines : 

“ In Ockington, in Devonsheer, 

My vather he lived vor many a yeer ; 

And I his son with him did dwell. 

To tend his sheep : 'twas doleful well. 

Diddle-diddle !” 

“You know, Ingram, it mustbe precious 
hard for a man who has to knock about 
in society, and take his wife with him, 
to have to explain to everybody that she 
is in reality a most unusual and gifted 
young person, and that she must not be 
expected to talk. It is all very well for 
him in his own house — that is to say, if 
he can preserve all the sentiment that 
made her shyness fine and wonderful 
before their marriage — but a man owes a 
little to society, even in choosing a wife.” 

Another pause. 

“ It happened on a 2artin day 

Four-score o' the sheep they rinned astray : 

Says vather to I, ‘Jack, rin arter 'm, du !' 

Sez I to vather, ‘ I’m darned if I du !' 

Diddle-diddle !" 

“Now you are the sort of a man, I 
should think, who would never get care - 
less about your wife. You would always 
believe about her what you believed at 
first ; and I dare say you would live very 
happily in your own house if she was a 
decent sort of woman. But you would 
have to go out into society sometimes ; 
and the very fact that you had not got 
careless — as many men would, leaving 
their wives to produce any sort of im- 
pression they might — would make you 
vexed that the world could not off-hand 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


13 


value your wife as you fancy she ought 
to be valued. Don’t you see ?” ' 

This was the answer : 

“ Purvoket much at my rude tongue, 

A dish o’ brath at me he vlung. 

Which so incensed me to wrath. 

That I up an’ knack un instantly to arth. 

Diddle-diddle 1” 

“ As for your Princess Sheila, I firmly 
believe you have some romantic notion 
of marrying her and taking her up to 
London with you. If you seriously in- 
tend such a thing, I shall not argue with 
you. I shall praise her by the hour to- 
gether, for I may have to depend on 
Mrs. Edward Ingram for my admission 
to your house. But if you only have the 
fancy as a fancy, consider what the re- 
sult would be. You say she has never 
been to a school ; that she has never had 
the companionship of a girl of her own 
age ; that she has never read a news- 
paper ; that she has never been out of 
this island ; and that almost her sole so- 
ciety has been that of her mother, who 
educated her and tended her, and left 
her as ignorant of the real world as if 
she had lived all her life in a lighthouse. 
Goodness gracious ! what a figure such a 
girl would cut in South Kensington !” 

“ My dear fellow,” said Ingram at last, 
‘‘don’t be absurd. You will soon see 
what are the relations between Sheila 
Mackenzie and me, and you will be sat- 
isfied. I marry her? Do you think I 
would take the child to London to show 
her its extravagance and shallow society, 
and break her heart with thinking of the 
sea, and of the rude islanders she knew, 
and of their hard and bitter struggle for 
life ? No. I should not like to see my 
wild Highland doe shut up in one of 
your southern parks among your tame 
fallow-deer. She would look at them 
askance. She would separate herself 
from them ; and by and by she would 
make one wild effort to escape, and kill 
herself. That is not the fate in store for 
our good little Sheila ; so you need not 
make yourself unhappy about her or me. 

‘ Now all ye young men, of every persuasion, 

Never quarl wi' your vather upon any occasion ; 

F or instead of being better, you’ll vind you'll be wuss. 
For he’ll kick you out o' doors, without a varden in 
your puss ! 

Diddle-diddle !' 


Talking of Devonshire, how is that young 
American lady you met at Torquay in 
the spring?” 

‘‘There, now, is the sort of woman a 
man would be safe in marrying!” 

‘‘And how ?” 

“Oh, well, you know,” said Frank 
Lavender. “ I mean the sort of woman 
who would do you credit — hold her own 
in society, and that sort of thing. You 
must meet her some day. I tell you, 
Ingram, you will be delighted and 
charmed with her manners and her 
grace, and the clever things she says ; 
at least, everybody else is.” 

“Ah, well !” 

“You don’t seem to care much for 
brilliant women,” remarked the other, 
rather disappointed that his companion 
showed so little interest. 

“ Oh yes, I like brilliant women very 
well. A clever woman is always a pleas- 
anter companion than a clever man. 
But you were talking of the choice of a 
wife ; and pertness in a girl, although it 
may be amusing at the time, may be- 
come something else by and by. In- 
deed, I shouldn’t advise a young man 
to marry an epigrammatist, for you see 
her shrewdness and smartness are gen- 
erally the result of experiences in which 
he has had no share.” 

“There may be something in that,” 
said Lavender carelessly ; “but of course, 
you know, with .a widow it is different ; 
and Mrs. Lorraine never does go in for 
the ingenue .” 

The pale blue cloud that had for some 
time been lying faintly along the horizon 
now came nearer and more near, until 
they could pick out something like the 
configuration of the island, its bays and 
promontories and mountains. The day 
seemed to become warmer as they got 
out of the driving wind of the Channel, 
and the heavy roll of the sea had so far 
subsided. Through comparatively calm 
water the great Clansman drove her way, 
until, on getting near the land and under 
shelter of the peninsula of Eye, the voy- 
agers found themselves on a beautiful 
blue* plain, with the spacious harbor of 
Stornoway opening out before them. 
There, on the one side, lay a white and 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


14 

cleanly town, with its shops and quays 
and shipping. Above the bay in front 
stood a great gray castle, surrounded by 
pleasure-grounds and terraces and gar- 
dens ; while on the southern side the 
harbor was overlooked by a semicircle 
of hills, planted with every variety of 
tree. The white houses, the blue bay 
and the large gray building set amid 
green terraces and overlooked by wood- 
ed hills, formed a bright and lively little 
picture on this fresh and brilliant fore- 
noon ; and young Lavender, who had a 
quick eye for compositions which he was 
always about to undertake, but which 
never appeared on canvas, declared en- 
thusiastically that he would spend a day 
or two in Stornoway on his return from 
Borva, and take home with him some 
sketch of the place. 

“And is Miss Sheila on the quay 
yonder?” he asked. 

“Not likely,” said Ingram. “It is a 
long drive across the island, and I sup- 
pose she would remain at home to look 
after our dinner in the evening.” 

“What? The wonderful Princess 
Sheila look after our dinner ! Has she 
visions among the pots and pans, and 
does she look unutterable things when 
she is peeling potatoes ?” 

Ingram laughed: “There will be a 
pretty alteration in your tune in a couple 
of days. You are sure to fall in love 
with her, and sigh desperately for a week 
or two. You always do when you meet 
a woman anywhere. But it won’t hurt 
you much, and she won’t know anything 
about it.” 

“ I should rather like to fall in love 
with her, to see how furiously jealous 
you would become. However, here we 
are.” 

“And there is Mackenzie — the man 
with the big gray beard and the peaked 
cap — and he is talking to the chamber- 
lain of the island.” 

“ What does he get up on his wagonette 
for, instead of coming on board to meet 
you ?” 

“Oh, that is one of his little tricks,” 
said Ingram with a good-humored smile. 

“ He means to receive us in state, and 
impress you, a stranger, with his dignity. 


The good old fellow has a hundred harm- 
less ways like that, and you must humor 
him. He has been accustomed to be 
treated en 7'oi t you know.” 

“Then the papa of the mysterious 
princess is not perfect ?” 

“ Perhaps I ought to tell you now that 
Mackenzie’s oddest notion is that he has 
a wonderful skill in managing men, and 
in concealing the manner of his doing 
it. I tell you this that you mayn’t laugh 
and hurt him when he is attempting 
something that he considers particu- 
larly crafty, and that a child could see 
through.” 

"But what is the aim of it all ?” 

“Oh, nothing.” 

“ He does not do a little bet occasion- 
ally ?” 

“ Oh dear ! no. He is the best and 
honestest fellow in the world, but it 
pleases him to fancy that he is pro- 
foundly astute, and that other people 
don’t see the artfulness with which he 
reaches some little result that is not of 
the least consequence to anybody.” 

“It seems to me,” remarked Mr. Lav- 
ender with a coolness and a shrewdness 
that rather surprised his companion, 
“that it would not be difficult to get the 
King of Borva to assume the honors of 
a papa-in-law.” 

The steamer was moored at last : the 
crowd of fishermen and loungers drew 
near to meet their friends who had come 
up from Glasgow — for there are few 
strangers, as a rule, arriving at Storno- 
way to whet the curiosity of the island- 
ers — and the tall gillie who had been 
standing by Mackenzie’s horses came 
on board to get the luggage of the young 
men. 

“Well, Duncan,” said the elder of 
them, “and how are you, and how is 
Mr. Mackenzie, and how is Miss Sheila ? 
You have not brought her with you, I 
see.” 

“But Miss Sheila is ferry well, what- 
ever, Mr. Ingram, and it is a great day, 
this day, for her, tat you will be coming 
to the Lewis; and it wass tis morning 
she wass up at ta break o’ day, and up 
ta hills to get some bits o’ green things 
for ta rooms you will hef, Mr. Ingram. 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


15 


Ay, it iss a great day, tis day, for Miss 
Sheila.” 

“ By Jove, they all rave about Sheila 
up in this quarter!” said Lavender, giv- 
ing Duncan a fishing-rod and a bag he 
had brought from the cabin. “ I sup- 
pose in a week’s time I shall begin to 
rave about her too. Look sharp, Ingram, 
and let us have audience of His Maj- 
esty.” 

The King of Borva fixed his eye on 
young Lavender, and scanned him nar- 
rowly as he was being introduced. His 
welcome of Ingram had been most gra- 
cious and friendly, but he received his 
companion with something of a severe 
politeness. He requested him to take a 
seat beside him, so that he might see the 
country as they went across to Borva ; 
and Lavender having done so, Ingram 
and Duncan got into the body of the 
wagonette, and the party drove off. 

Passing through the clean and bright 
little town, Mackenzie suddenly pulled 
up his horses in front of a small shop, 
in the window of which some cheap bits 
of jewelry were visible. The man came 
out, and Mr. Mackenzie explained with 
some care and precision that he want- 
ed a silver brooch of a particular sort. 
While the jeweler had returned to seek 
the article in question, Frank Lavender 
was gazing around him in some wonder 
at the appearance of so much civiliza- 
tion on this remote and rarely-visited 
island. There were no haggard sav- 
ages, unkempt and scantily clad, com- 
ing forth from their dens in the rocks to 
stare wildly at the strangers. On the con- 
trary, there was a prevailing air of com- 
fort and “bienness” about the people 
and their houses. He saw handsome 
girls with coal-black hair and fresh com- 
plexions, who wore short and thick blue 
petticoats, with a scarlet tartan shawl 
wrapped round their bosom and fasten- 
ed at the waist ; stalwart, thick-set men, 
in loose blue jacket and trowsers and 
scarlet cap, many of them with bushy 
red beards ; and women of extraordi- 
nary breadth of shoulder, who carried 
enormous loads in a creel strapped on 
their back, while they employed their 
hands in contentedly knitting stockings 
2 


as they passed along. But what was 
the purpose of these mighty loads of 
fish-bones they carried — burdens that 
would have appalled a railway porter 
of the South ? 

“ You will see, sir,” observed the King 
of Borva in reply to Lavender’s ques- 
tion, ‘‘there is not much of the phos- 
phates in the grass of this island ; and 
the cows they are mad to get the fish- 
bones to lick, and it iss many of them 
you cannot milk unless you put the 
bones before them.” 

“But why do the lazy fellows loung- 
ing about there let the women carry 
those enormous loads ?” 

Mr. Mackenzie stared : “ Lazy fel- 
lows ! They hef harder work than any 
you will know of in your country ; and 
besides the fishing they will do the 
ploughing and much of the farm-work. 
And iss the women to do none at all ? 
That iss the nonsense that my daughter 
talks ; but she has got it out of books, 
and what do they know how the poor 
people hef to live ?” 

At this moment the jeweler returned 
with some half dozen brooches display- 
ed on a plate, and shining with all the 
brilliancy of cairngorm stones, polished 
silver and variously-colored pebbles. 

“ Now, John Mackintyre, this is a gen- 
tleman from London,” said Mackenzie, 
regarding the jeweler sternly, “and he 
will know all apout such fine things, and 
you will not put a big price on them.” 

It was now Lavender’s turn to stare, 
but he good-naturedly accepted the du- 
ties of referee, and eventually a brooch 
was selected and paid for, the price be- 
ing six shillings. Then they drove on 
again. 

“ Sheila will know nothing of this — it 
will be a great surprise for her,” said , 
Mackenzie, almost to himself, as he 
opened the white box and saw the glar- 
ing piece of jewelry lying on the white 
cotton. 

“Good heavens, sir!” cried Frank 
Lavender, “you don’t mean to say you 
bought that brooch for your daughter ?” 

“And why not?” said the King of 
Borva in great surprise. 

The young man perceived his mis- 


i6 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


take, grew considerably confused, and 
only said, “Well, I should have thought 
that — that some small piece of gold jew- 
elry, now, would be better suited for a 
young lady.” 

Mackenzie smiled shrewdly : “ I had 
something to go on. It wass Sheila her- 
self was in Stornoway three weeks ago, 
and she wass wanting to buy a brooch 
for a young girl who has come down to 
us from Suainabost and is very useful in 
the kitchen, and it wass a brooch just 
like this one she gave to her.” 

“Yes, to a kitchen-maid,” said the 
young man meekly. 

“But Mairi is Sheila’s cousin,” said 
Mackenzie with continued surprise. 

“ Lavender does not understand High- 
land ways yet, Mr. Mackenzie,” said 
Ingram from behind. “You know we 
in the South have different fashions. 
Our servants are nearly always strangers 
to us — not relations and companions.” 

“Oh, I hef peen in London myself,” 
said Mackenzie in somewhat of an in- 
jured tone; and then he added with a 
touch of self-satisfaction, “and I hef been 
in Paris, too.” 

“And Miss Sheila, has she been in 
London?” asked Lavender, feigning ig- 
norance. 

“ She has never been out of the Lewis.” 

“ But don’t you think the education of 
a young lady should include some little 
experience of traveling ?” 

“ Sheila, she will be educated quite 
enough ; and is she going to London or 
Paris without me ?” 

“You might take her.” 

“ I have too much to do on the island 
now, and Sheila has much to do. I do 
not think she will ever see any of those 
places, and she will not be much the 
worse.” 

Two young men off for their holidays, 
a brilliant day shining all around them, 
the sweet air of the sea and the moor- 
land blowing about them, — this little par- 
ty that now drove away from Stornoway 
ought to have been in the best of spirits. 
And indeed the young fellow who sat 
beside Mackenzie was bent on pleasing 
his host by praising everything he saw. 
He praised the gallant little horses that 


whirled them past the plantations and 
out into the open country. He praised 
the rich black peat that was visible in 
long lines and heaps, where the towns- 
people were slowly eating into the moor- 
land. Then all these traces of occupa- 
tion were left behind, and the travelers 
were alone in the untenanted heart of 
the island, where the only sounds audi- 
ble were the humming of insects in the 
sunlight and the falling of the streams. 
Away in the south the mountains were 
of a silvery and transparent blue. Near- 
er at hand the rich reds and browns of 
the moorland softened into a tender and 
beautiful green on nearing the margins 
of the lakes ; and these stretches of 
water were now as fair and bright as 
the sky above them, and were scarcely 
ruffled by the moorfowl moving out from 
the green rushes. Still nearer at hand 
great masses of white rock lay embed- 
ded in the soft soil ; and what could 
have harmonized better with the rough 
and silver-gray surface than the patches 
of rose-red bell-heather that grew up in 
their clefts or hung over their summits ? 
The various and beautiful colors around 
seemed to tingle with light and warmth 
as the clear sun shone on them and the 
keen mountain-air blew over them ; and 
the King of Borva was so far thawed by 
the enthusiasm of his companions that he 
regarded the far country with a pleased 
smile, as if the enchanted land belonged 
to him, and as if the wonderful colors 
and the exhilarating air and the sweet 
perfumes were of his own creation. 

Mr. Mackenzie did not know much 
about tints and hues, but he believed 
what he heard ; and it was perhaps, 
after all, not very surprising that a 
gentleman from London, who had skill 
of pictures and other delicate matters, 
should find strange marvels in a com- 
mon stretch of moor, with a few lakes 
here and there, and some lines of moun- 
tain only good for sheilings. It was not 
for him to check the raptures of his guest. 
He began to be friendly with the young 
man, and could not help regarding him 
as a more cheerful companion than his 
neighbor Ingram, who would sit by your 
side for an hour at a time without break- 


A PRINCESS OF. THULE. 


17 


ing the monotony of the horses’ tramp 
with a single remark. He had formed 
a poor opinion of Lavender’s physique 
from the first glimpse he had of his 
white fingers and girl-like complexion ; 
but surely a man who had such a vast 
amount of good spirits and such a rapid- 
ity of utterance must have something 
corresponding to these qualities in sub- 
stantial bone and muscle. There was 
something pleasing and ingenuous too 
about this flow of talk. Men who had 
arrived at years of wisdom, and knew 
how to study and use their fellows, were 
not to be led into these betrayals of their 
secret opinions ; but for a young man — 
what could be more pleasing than to see 
him lay open his soul to the observant 
eye of a master of men ? Mackenzie 
began to take a great fancy to young 
Lavender. 

“Why,” said Lavender, with a fine 
color mantling in his cheeks as the wind 
caught them on a higher portion of the 
road, “I had heard of Lewis as a most 
bleak and desolate island, flat moorland 
and lake, without a hill to be seen. And 
everywhere I see hills, and yonder are 
great mountains which I hope to get 
nearer before we leave.” 

“We have mountains in this island,” 
remarked Mackenzie slowly as he kept 
his eye on his companion — "we have 
mountains in this island sixteen thou- 
sand feet high.” 

Lavender looked sufficiently astonish- 
ed, and the old man was pleased. He 
paused for a moment or two, and said, 
“ But this iss the way of it : you will see 
that the middle of the mountains it has 
all been washed away by the weather, 
and you will only have the sides now 
dipping one way and the other at each 
side o’ the island. But it iss a very 
clever man in Stornoway will tell me 
that you can make out what wass the 
height o’ the mountain, by watching the 
dipping of the rocks on each side ; and 
it iss an older country, this island, than 
any you will know of ; and there were 
the mountains sixteen thousand feet high 
long before all this country and all Scot- 
land and England wass covered with 
ice.” 


The young man was very desirous to 
show his interest in this matter, but did 
not know very well how. At last he 
ventured to ask whether there were any 
fossils in the blocks of gneiss that were 
scattered over the moorland. 

“Fossils?” said Mackenzie. “Oh, I 
will not care much about such small 
things. If you will ask Sheila, she will 
tell you all about it, and about the small 
things she finds growing on the hills. 
That iss not of much consequence to 
me ; but I will tell you what is the best 
thing the island grows : it is good girls 
and strong men — men that can go to 
the fishing, and come back to plough 
the fields and cut the peat and build the 
houses, and leave the women to look 
after the fields and the gardens when 
they go back again to the fisheries. But 
it is the old people — they are ferry cun- 
ning, and they will not put their money 
in the bank at Stornoway, but will hide 
it away about the house, and then they 
will come to Sheila and ask for money 
to put a pane of glass in their house. 
And she has promised that to every one 
who will make a window in the wall of 
their house ; and she is very simple with 
them, and does not understand the old 
people that tell lies. But when I hear 
of it, I say nothing to Sheila — she will 
know nothing about it — but I hef a 
watch put upon the people ; and it wass 
only yesterday I will take back two shil- 
lings she gave to an old woman of Bor- 
vabost that told many lies. What does 
a young thing know of these old people ? 
She will know nothing at all, and it iss 
better for some one else to look after 
them, but not to speak one word of it 
to her.” 

“It must require great astuteness to 
manage a primitive people like that,” 
said young Lavender with an air of con- 
viction ; and the old man eagerly and 
proudly assented, and went on to tell of 
the manifold diplomatic arts he used in 
reigning over his small kingdom, and 
how his subjects lived in blissful igno- 
rance that this controlling power was 
being exercised. 

They were startled by an exclamation 
from Ingram, who called to Mackenzie 


i8 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


to pull up the horses just as they were 
passing over a small bridge. 

“ Look there, Lavender ! did you ever 
see salmon jumping like that ? Look at 
the size of them !” 

“Oh, it iss nothing,” said Mackenzie, 
driving on again. “ Where you will see 
the salmon, it is in the narrows of Loch 
Roag, where they come into the rivers, 
and the tide is low. Then you will see 
them jumping; and if the water wass 
too low for a long time, they will die in 
hundreds and hundreds.” 

“But what makes them jump before 
they get into the rivers ?” 

Old Mackenzie smiled a crafty smile, 
as if he had found out all the ways and 
the secrets of the salmon: “They will 
jump to look about them — that iss 
all.” 

“ Do you think a salmon can see where 
he is going ?” 

“And maybe you will explain this to 
me, then,” said the king with a com- 
passionate air: “how iss it the salmon 
will try to jump over some stones in the 
river, and he will see he cannot go over 
them ; but does he fall straight down on 
the stones and kill himself ? Neffer — no, 
neffer. He will get back to the pool he 
left by turning in the air : that is what I 
hef seen hundreds of times myself.” 

“ Then they must be able to fly as well 
as see in the air.” 

“ You may say about it what you will 
please, but that is what I know — that is 
what I know ferry well myself.” 

“And I should think there were not 
many people in the country who knew 
more about salmon than you,” said 
Frank Lavender. “And I hear, too, 
that your daughter is a great fisher.” 

But this was a blunder. The old man 
frowned: “Who will tell you such non- 
sense ? Sheila has gone out many times 
with Duncan, and he will put a rod in 
her hands : yes, and she will have caught 
a fish or two, but it iss not a story to tell. 
My daughter she will have plenty to do 
about the house, without any of such 
nonsense. You will expect to find us all 
savages, with such stories of nonsense.” 

“ I am sure not,” said Lavender warm- 
ly. “ I have been very much struck with 


the civilization of the island, so far as I 
have seen it; and I can assure you I 
have always heard of Miss Sheila as a 
singularly accomplished young lady.” 

“ Yes,” said Mackenzie somewhat mol- 
lified, “ Sheila has been well brought up : 
she is not a fisherman’s lass, running 
about wild and catching the salmon. I 
cannot listen to such nonsense, and it iss 
Duncan will tell it.” 

“ I can assure you, no. I have never 
spoken to Duncan. The fact is, Ingram 
mentioned that your daughter had caught 
a salmon or two — as a tribute to her skill, 
you know.” 

“Oh, I know it wass Duncan,” said 
Mackenzie, with a deeper frown coming 
over his face. “ I will hef some means 
taken to stop Duncan from talking such 
nonsense.” 

The young man, knowing nothing as 
yet of the child-like obedience paid to 
the King of Borva by his islanders, 
thought to himself, “Well, you are a 
very strong and self-willed old gentle- 
man, but if I were you I should not 
meddle much with that tall keeper with 
the eagle beak and the gray eyes. I 
should not like to be a stag, and know 
that that fellow was watching me some- 
where with a rifle in his hands.” 

At length they came upon the brow of 
the hill overlooking Garra-na-hina* and 
the panorama of the western lochs and 
mountains. Down there on the side of 
the hill was the small inn, with its little 
patch of garden ; then a few moist mea- 
dows leading over to the estuary of the 
Black River ; and beyond that an illimit- 
able prospect of heathy undulations ris- 
ing into the mighty peaks of Cracabhal, 
Mealasabhal and Suainabhal. Then on 
the right, leading away out to the as 
yet invisible Atlantic, lay the blue plain 
of Loch Roag, with a margin of yellow 
seaweed along its shores, where the rocks 
revealed themselves at low water, and 
with a multitude of large, variegated and 
verdant islands which hid from sight the 
still greater Borva beyond. 

They stopped to have a glass of whisky 
at Garra-na-hina, and Mackenzie got 

* Literally, Gearaidh-na h-A imhne — “ the cutting 
of the river.” 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


*9 


down from the wagonette and went into 
the inn. 

“And this is a Highland loch !” said 
Lavender, turning to his companion from 
the South. “ It is an enchanted sea : you 
could fancy yourself in the Pacific, if 
only there were some palm trees on the 
shores of the islands. No wonder you 
took for an Eve any sort of woman you 
met in such a paradise !” 

“ You seem to be thinking a good deal 
about that young lady.” 

“Well, who would not wish to make 
the acquaintance of a pretty girl, especial- 
ly when you have plenty of time on your 
hands, and nothing to do but pay her 
little attentions, you know, and so forth, 
as being the daughter of your host ?” 

There was no particular answer to such 
an incoherent question, but Ingram did 
not seem so well pleased as he had been 
with the prospect of introducing his friend 
to the young Highland girl whose praises 
he had been reciting for many a day. 

However, they drank their whisky, 
drove on to Callernish, and here paused 
for a minute or two to show the stranger 
a series of large so-called Druidical stones 
which occupy a small station overlook- 
ing the loch. Could anything have been 
more impressive than the sight of these 
solitary gray pillars placed on this bit of 
table-land high over the sea, and telling 
of a race that vanished ages ago, and 
left the surrounding plains and hills and 
shores a wild and untenanted solitude ? 
But, somehow Lavender did not care 
to remain among those voiceless monu- 
ments of a forgotten past. He said he 
would come and sketch them some other 
day. He praised the picture all around, 
and then came back to the stretch of 
ruffled blue water lying at the base of 
the hill. “Where was Mr. Mackenzie’s 
boat?” he asked. 

They left the high plain, with its Tuir- 
sachan * or Stones of Mourning, and 
descended to the side of the loch. In a 
few moments, Duncan, who had been 
disposing of the horses and the wagon- 

* Another name given by the islanders to these 
stones is Fir-bhreige , “ false men.” Both names. 
False Men and the Mourners, should be of some in- 
terest to antiquarians, for they will suit pretty nearly 
any theory. 


ette, overtook them, got ready the boat, 
and presently they were cutting asunder 
the bright blue plain of summer waves. 

At last they were nearing the King 
of Borva’s home, and Ingram began to 
study the appearance of the neighbor- 
ing shores, as if he would pick out some 
feature of the island he remembered. 
The white foam hissed down the side 
of the open boat. The sun burned hot 
on the brown sail. Far away over the 
shining plain the salmon were leaping 
into the air, catching a quick glint of 
silver on their scales before they splash- 
ed again into the water. Half a dozen 
sea-pyes, with their beautiful black and 
white plumage and scarlet beaks and 
feet, flew screaming out from the rocks 
and swept in rapid circles above the 
boat. A long flight of solan geese could 
just be seen slowly sailing along the 
western horizon. As the small craft got 
out toward the sea the breeze freshened 
slightly, and she lay over somewhat as 
the brine-laden winds caught her and 
tingled on the cheeks of her passengers 
from the softer South. Finally, as the 
great channel widened out, and the va- 
rious smaller islands disappeared be- 
hind, Ingram touched his companion on 
the shoulder, looked over to a long and 
low line of rock and hill, and said, 
“ Borva !” 

And this was Borva ! — nothing visible 
but an indefinite extent of rocky shore, 
with here and there a bay of white sand, 
and over that a table-land of green pas- 
ture, apparently uninhabited. 

“ There are not many people on the 
island,” said Lavender, who seemed 
rather disappointed with the look of the 
place. 

“There are three hundred,” said Mac- 
kenzie with the air of one who had ex- 
perienced the difficulties of ruling over 
three hundred islanders. 

He had scarcely spoken when his 
attention was called by Duncan to some 
object that the gillie had been regarding 
for some minutes back. 

“ Yes, it iss Miss Sheila,” said Duncan. 

A sort of flush of expectation passed 
over Lavender’s face, and he sprang to 
his feet. Ingram laughed. Did the 


20 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


foolish youth fancy he could see half as 
far as this gray-eyed, eagle-faced man, 
who had now sunk into his accustomed 
seat by the mast ? There was nothing 
visible to ordinary eyes but a speck of 
a boat, with a single sail up, which was 
apparently, in the distance, running in 
for Borva. 

“Ay, ay, ay,” said Mackenzie in a 
vexed way, “it is Sheila, true enough; 
and what will she do out in the boat at 
this time, when she wass to be at home 
to receive the gentlemen that hef come 
all the way from London ?” 

“Well, Mr. Mackenzie,” said Laven- 
der, “I should be sorry to think that our 
coming had interfered in any way what- 
ever with your daughter’s amusements.” 

“Amusements !” said the old man with 
a look of surprise. “ It iss not amuse- 
ments she will go for : that is no amuse- 
ments for her. It is for some teffle of 
a purpose she will go, when it iss the 
house that is the proper place for her, 
with friends coming from so great a 
journey.” 

Presently it became clear that a race 
between the two boats was inevitable, 
both of them making for the same point. 
Mackenzie would take no notice of such 
a thing, but there was a grave smile on 
Duncan’s face, and something like a 
look of pride in his keen eyes. 

“There iss no one, not one,” he said, 
almost to himself, “'will take her in bet- 
ter than Miss Sheila — not one in ta isl- 
and. And it wass me tat learnt her 
every bit o’ ta steering about Borva.” 

The strangers could now make out 
that- in the other boat there were two 
girls — one seated in the stern, the other 
by the mast. Ingram took out his hand- 
kerchief and waved it : a similar token 
of recognition was floated out from the 
other vessel. But Mackenzie’s boat pres- 
ently had the better of the wind, and 
slowly drew on ahead, until, when her 
passengers landed on the rude stone 
quay, they found the other and smaller 
craft still some little distance off. 

Lavender paid little attention to his 
luggage. He let Duncan do with it what 
he liked. He was watching the small 
boat coming in, and getting a little im- 


patient, and perhaps a little nervous, in 
waiting for a glimpse of the young lady 
in the stern. He could vaguely make 
out that she had an abundance of dark 
hair looped up ; that she wore a small 
straw hat with a short white feather in 
it ; and that, for the rest, she seemed to 
be habited entirely in some rough and 
close-fitting costume of dark blue. Or 
was there a glimmer of a band of rose- 
red round her neck ? 

The small boat was cleverly run along- 
side the jetty : Duncan caught her bow 
and held her fast, and Miss Sheila, with 
a heavy string of lythe in her right hand, 
stepped, laughing and blushing, on to the 
quay. Ingram was there. She dropped 
the fish on the stones and took his two 
hands in hers, and without uttering a 
word looked a glad welcome into his 
face. It was a face capable of saying un- 
written things — fine and delicate in form, 
and yet full of an abundance of health 
and good spirits that shone in the deep 
gray-blue eyes. Lavender’s first emotion 
was one of surprise that he should have 
heard this handsome, well - knit and 
proud-featured girl called “little Sheila,” 
and spoken of in a pretty and caressing 
way. He thought there was something 
almost majestic in her figure, in the 
poising of her head and the outline of 
her face. But presently he began to 
perceive some singular suggestions of 
sensitiveness and meekness in the low, 
sweet brow, in the short and exquisitely- 
curved upper lip, and in the look of the 
tender blue eyes, which had long black 
eyelashes to give them a peculiar and 
indefinable charm. All this he noticed 
hastily and timidly as he heard Ingram, 
who still held the girl’s hands in his, 
saying, “Well, Sheila, and you haven’t 
quite forgotten me ? And you are grown 
such a woman now : why, I mustn’t call 
you Sheila any more, I think. But let 
me introduce to you my friend, who has 
come all the way from London to see all 
the wonderful things of Borva.” 

If there was any embarrassment or 
blushing during that simple ceremony, 
it was not on the side of the Highland 
girl, for she frankly shook hands with 
him, and said, “ And are you very well ?” 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


21 


The second impression which Laven- 
der gathered from her was, that nowhere 
in the world was English pronounced 
so beautifully as in the island of Lewis. 
The gentle intonation with which she 
spoke was so tender and touching — the 
slight dwelling on the e in “very” and 
“ well ” seemed to have such a sound of 
sincerity about it, that he could have 
fancied he had been a friend of hers for 
a lifetime. And if she said “ferry” for 
“very,” what then? It was the most 
beautiful English he had ever heard. 

The party now moved off toward the 
shore, above the long white curve of 
which Mackenzie’s house was visible. 
The old man himself led the way, and 
had, by his silence, apparently not quite 
forgiven his daughter for having been ab- 
sent from home when his guests arrived. 

“Now, Sheila,” said Ingram, “tell me 
all about yourself : what have you been 
doing ?” 

“This morning?” said the girl, walk- 
ing beside him with her hand laid on his 
arm, and with the happiest look on her 
face. 

“This morning, to begin with. Did 
you catch those fish yourself?” 

“Oh no, there was no time for that. 
And it was Mairi and I saw a boat 
coming in, and it was going to Mevaig, 
but we overtook it, and got some of the 
fish, and we thought we should be back 
before you came. However, it is no 
matter, since you are here. And you 
have been very well ? And did you see 
any difference in Stornoway when you 
came over?” 

Lavender began to think that Styor- 
no.ray sounded ever so much more pleas- 
ant than mere Stornoway. 

“ We had not a minute to wait in Stor- 
noway. But tell me, Sheila, all about 
Borva and yourself : that is better than 
Stornoway. How are your schools get- 
ting on ? And have you bribed or fright- 
ened all the children into giving up Gaelic 
y et ? How is John the Piper ? and does 
the Free Church minister still complain 
of him? And have you caught any 
more wild-ducks and tamed them ? And 
are there any gray geese up at Loch-an- 
Eilean ?” 


“Oh, that is too many at once,” said 
Sheila, laughing. “But I am afraid 
your friend will find Borva very lonely 
and dull. There is not much there at 
all, for all the lads are away at the 
Caithness fishing. And you should have 
shown him all about Stornoway, and 
taken him up to the castle and the beau- 
tiful gardens.” 

“ He has seen all sorts of castles, 
Sheila, and all sorts of gardens in every 
part of the world. He has seen every- 
thing to be seen in the great cities and 
countries that are only names to you. 
He has traveled in France, Italy, Rus- 
sia, Germany, and seen all the big towns 
that you hear of in history.” 

“ That is what I should like to do if I 
were a man,” said Sheila; “and many 
and many a time I wish I had been a 
man, that I could go to the fishing and 
work in the fields, and then, when I had 
enough money, go away and see other 
countries and strange people.” 

“But if you were a man, I should not 
have come all the way from London to 
see you,” said Ingram, patting the hand 
that lay on his arm. 

“But if I were a man,” said the girl, 
quite frankly, “ I should go up to Lon- 
don to see you.” 

Mackenzie smiled grimly, and said, 
“Sheila, it is nonsense you will talk.” 

At this moment Sheila turned round 
and said, “ Oh, we have forgotten poor 
Mairi. Mairi, why did you not leave the 
fish for Duncan ? They are too heavy 
for you. I will carry them to the house ?” 

But Lavender sprang forward, and in- 
sisted on taking possession of the thick 
cord with its considerable weight of 
lythe. 

“ This is my cousin Mairi,” said Sheila • 
and forthwith the young, fair-faced, tim 
id-eyed girl shook hands with the gen- 
tlemen, and said, just as if she had been 
watching Sheila, “And are you ferry 
well, sir ?” 

For the rest of the way up to the 
house Lavender walked by the side of 
Sheila ; and as the string of lythe had 
formed the introduction to their talk, it 
ran pretty much upon natural history. 
In about five minutes she had told him 


22 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


more about sea-birds and fish than ever 
he knew in his life ; and she wound up 
this information by offering to take him 
out on the following morning, that he 
might himself catch some lythe. 

“But I am a wretchedly bad fisher- 
man, Miss Mackenzie,” he said. “ It is 
some years since I tried to throw a fly.” 

“ Oh, there is no need for good fishing 
when you catch lythe,” she said earn- 
estly. “You will see Mr. Ingram catch 
them. It is only a big white fly you will 
need, and a long line, and when the fish 
takes the fly, down he goes — a great 
depth. Then when you have got him 
and he is killed, you must cut the sides, 
as you see that is done, and string him 
to a rope and trail him behind the boat 
all the way home. If you do not do 
that, it iss no use at all to eat. But if 
you like the salmon-fishing, my papa 
will teach you that. There is no one,” 
she added proudly, “ can catch salmon 
like my papa — not even Duncan — and 
the gentlemen who come in the autumn 
to Stornoway, they are quite surprised 
when my papa goes to fish with them.” 

“I suppose he is a good shot too,” 
said the young man, amused to notice 
the proud way in which the girl spoke 
of her father. 

“Oh, he can shoot anything. He will 
shoot a seal if he comes up but for one 
moment above the water; and all the 
birds — he will get you all the birds if 
you will wish to take any away with 
you. We have no deer on the island — 
it is too small for that — but in the Lewis 
and in Harris there are many, many 
thousands of deer, and my papa has 
many invitations when the gentlemen 
come up in the autumn ; and if you look 
in the game-book of the lodges, you will 
see there is not any one who has shot 
so many deer as my papa — not any one 
whatever.” 

At length they reached the building of 
dark and rude stone-work, with its red 
coping, its spacious porch and its small 
enclosure of garden in front. Lavender 
praised the flowers in this enclosure : he 
guessed they were Sheila’s particular 
care ; but in truth there was nothing rare 
or delicate among the plants growing in 


this exposed situation. There were a 
few clusters of large yellow pansies, a 
calceolaria or two, plenty of wallflower, 
some clove-pinks, and an abundance 
of sweet-william in all manner of colors. 
But the chief beauty of the small gai ien 
was a magnificent tree -fuchsia which 
grew in front of one of the windows, and 
was covered with deep rose-red flowers 
set amid its small and deep-green leaves. 
For the rest, a bit of honeysuckle was 
trained up one side of the porch, and at 
the small wooden gate there were two 
bushes of sweetbrier that filled the warm 
air with fragrance. 

Just before entering the house the two 
strangers turned to have a look at the 
spacious landscape lying all around in 
the perfect calm of a summer day. And 
lo ! before them there was but a blinding 
mass of white that glared upon their 
eyes, and caused them to see the far sea 
and the shores and the hills as but faint 
shadows appearing through a silvery 
haze. A thin fleece of cloud lay across 
the sun, but the light was nevertheless 
so intense that the objects near at hand 
— a disused boat lying bottom upward, 
an immense anchor of foreign make, 
and some such things — seemed to be as 
black as night as they lay on. the warm 
road. But when the eye got beyond the 
house and the garden, and the rough 
hillside leading down to Loch Roag, all 
the world appeared to be a blaze of calm, 
silent and luminous heat. Suainabhal 
and its brother mountains were only as 
clouds in the south. Along the western 
horizon the portion of the Atlantic that 
could be seen lay like a silent lake under 
a white sky. To get any touch of color, 
they had to turn eastward, and there the 
sunlight faintly fell on the green shores 
of Borva, on the narrows of Loch Roag, 
and the loose red sail of a solitary smack 
that was slowly coming round a head- 
land. They could hear the sound of the 
long oars. A pale line of shadow lay 
in the wake of the boat, but otherwise 
the black hull and the red sail seemed 
to be coming through a plain of molten 
silver. When the young men turned to 
go into the house the hall seemed a cav- 
ern of impenetrable darkness, and there 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


23 


was a flush of crimson light dancing be- 
fore their eyes. 

When Ingram had had his room point- 
ed out, Lavender followed him into it 
and shut the door. 

“By Jove, Ingram,” he said, with a 
singular light of enthusiasm on his hand- 
some face, “what a beautiful voice that 
girl has ! I have never heard anything 
so soft and musical in all my life ; and 
then when she smiles what perfect teeth 
she has ! And then, you know, there is 
an appearance, a style, a grace about 
her figure — But, I say, do you serious- 
ly mean to tell me you are not in love 
with her ?” 

“Of course I am not,” said the other 
impatientl/, as he was busily engaged 
with his portmanteau. 

“ Then let me give you a word of in- 
formation,” said the younger man, with 
an air of profound shrewdness : “ she is 
in love with you.” 

Ingram rose with some little touch of 
vexation on his face : “ Look here, Lav- 
ender : I am going to talk to you seri- 
ously. I wish you wouldn’t fancy that 
every one is in that condition of simmer- 
ing love-making you delight in. You 
never were in love, I believe — I doubt 
whether you ever will be — but you are 
always fancying yourself in love, and 
writing very pretty verses about it, and 
painting very pretty heads. I like the 
verses and the paintings well enough, 
however they are come by ; but don’t 
mislead yourself into believing that you 
know anything whatever of a real and 
serious passion by having engaged in 
all sorts of imaginative and semi-poet- 
ical dreams. It is a much more serious 
thing than that, mind you, when it comes 
to a man. And, for Heaven’s sake, don’t 
attribute any of that sort of sentimental 
make-believe to either Sheila Mackenzie 
or myself. We are not romantic folks. 
We have no imaginative gifts whatever, 
but we are very glad, you know, to be 
attentive and grateful to those who have. 
The fact is, I don’t think it quite fair — ” 
“ Let us suppose I am lectured enough ” 
said the other, somewhat stiffly. “ I sup- 
pose I am as good a judge of the cha- 
racter of a woman as most other men, 


although I am no great student, and 
have no hard and dried rules of phi- 
losophy at my fingers’ ends. Perhaps, 
however, one may learn more by mix- 
ing with other people and going out into 
the world than by sitting in a room with 
a dozen of books, and persuading one’s 
self that men and women are to be 
studied in that fashion.” 

“Go away, you stupid boy, and un- 
pack your portmanteau, and don’t quar 
rel with me,” said Ingram, putting out 
on the table some things he had brought 
for Sheila ; " and if you are friendly with 
Sheila and treat her like a human being, 
instead of trying to put a lot of romance 
and sentiment about her, she will teach 
you more than you could learn in a hun- 
dred drawing-rooms in a thousand years.” 


CHAPTER III. 

THERE WAS A KING IN THULE. 

He never took that advice. He had 
already transformed Sheila into a hero- 
ine during the half hour of their stroll 
from the beach and around the house. 
Not that he fell in love with her at first 
sight, or anything even approaching to 
that. He merely made her the central 
figure of a little speculative romance, as 
he had made many another woman be- 
fore. Of course, in these little fanciful 
dramas, written along the sky-line, as it 
were, of his life, he invariably pictured 
himself as the fitting companion of the 
fair creature he saw there. Who but him- 
self could understand the sentiment of 
her eyes, and teach her little love-ways, 
and express unbounded admiration of 
her? More than one practical young 
woman, indeed, in certain circles of 
London society, had been informed by 
her friends that Mr. Lavender was 
dreadfully in love with her ; and had 
been much surprised, after this confirma- 
tion of her suspicions, that he sought no 
means of bringing the affair to a reason- 
able and sensible issue. He did not 
even amuse himself by flirting with her, 
as men would willingly do who could 
not be charged with any serious purpose 
whatever. His devotion was more mys- 


24 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


terious and remote. A rumor would get 
about that Mr. Lavender had finished 
another of those charming heads in pas- 
tel, which, at a distance, reminded one 
of Greuze, and that Lady So-and-so, 
who *had bought it forthwith, had de- 
clared that it was the image of this 
young lady who was partly puzzled and 
partly vexed by the incomprehensible 
conduct of her reputed admirer. It was 
the fashion, in these social circles, to 
buy those heads of Lavender when he 
chose to paint them. He had achieved 
a great reputation by them. The good 
people liked to have a genius in their 
own set whom they had discovered, and 
who was only to be appreciated by per- 
sons of exceptional taste and penetra- 
tion. Lavender, the uninitiated were 
assured, was a most cultivated and bril- 
liant young man. He had composed 
some charming songs. He had written, 
from time to time, some quite delightful 
little poems, over which fair eyes had 
grown full and liquid. Who had not 
heard of the face that he painted for a 
certain young lady whom every one ex- 
pected him to marry ? 

The young man escaped a great deal 
of the ordinary consequences of this 
petting, but not all. He was at bottom 
really true-hearted, frank and generous 
— generous even to an extreme — but he 
had acquired a habit of producing strik- 
ing impressions which dogged and per- 
verted his every action and speech. He 
disliked losing a few shilling at billiards, 
but he did not mind losing a few pounds : 
the latter was good for a story. Had he 
possessed any money to invest in shares, 
he would have been irritated by small 
rises or small falls ; but he would have 
been vain of a big rise, and he would 
have regarded a big fall with equanim- 
ity, as placing him in a dramatic light. 
The exaggerations produced by this hab- 
it of his fostered strange delusions in the 
minds of people who did not know him 
very well : and sometimes the practical 
results, in the way of expected charities 
or what not, amazed him. He could 
not understand why people should have 
made such mistakes, and resented them 
as an injustice. 


And as they sat at dinner on this 
still, brilliant evening in summer, it was 
Sheila’s turn to be clothed in the gar- 
ments of romance. Her father, with 
his great gray beard and heavy brow, 
became the King of Thule, living in 
this solitary house overlooking the sea, 
and having memories of a dead sweet- 
heart. His daughter, the princess, had 
the glamour of a thousand legends dwell- 
ing in her beautiful eyes ; and when she 
walked by the shores of the Atlantic, 
that were now getting yellow under the 
sunset, what strange and unutterable 
thoughts must appear in the wonder of 
her face ! He remembered no more 
how he had pulled to pieces Ingram’s 
praises of Sheila. What had become 
of the “ ordinary young lady, who would 
be a little interesting, if a little stupid, 
before marriage, and after marriage sink 
into the dull, domestic hind’’ ? There 
could be no doubt that Sheila often sat 
silent for a considerable time, with her 
eyes fixed on her father’s face when he 
spoke, or turning to look at some other 
speaker. Had Lavender now been ask- 
ed if this silence had not a trifle of dull- 
ness in it, he would have replied by ask- 
ing if there were dullness in the stillness 
and the silence of the sea. He grew to 
regard her calm and thoughtful look as 
a sort of spell ; and if you had asked 
him what Sheila was like, he would have 
answered by saying that there was moon- 
light in her face. 

The room, too, in which this mystic 
princess sat was strange and wonderful. 
There were no doors visible, for the four 
walls were throughout covered by a pa- 
per of foreign manufacture, represent- 
ing spacious Tyrolese landscapes and in- 
cidents of the chase. When Lavender 
had first entered this chamber his eye 
had been shocked by these coarse and 
prominent pictures — by the green rivers, 
the blue lakes and the snow-peaks that 
rose above certain ruddy chalets. Here 
a chamois was stumbling down a ravine, 
and there an operatic peasant, some 
eight or ten inches in actual length, was 
pointing a gun. The large figures, the 
coarse colors, the impossible scenes — all 
this looked, at first sight, to be in the 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


25 


worst possible taste ; and Lavender was 
convinced that Sheila had nothing to do 
with the introduction of this abominable 
decoration. But somehow, when he turn- 
ed to the line of ocean that was visible 
from the window, to the lonely shores of 
the island and the monotony of colors 
showing in the still picture without, he 
began to fancy that there might be a 
craving up in these latitudes for some 
presentation, however rude and glaring, 
of the richer and more variegated life of 
the South. The figures and mountains 
on the walls became less prominent. He 
saw no incongruity in a whole chalet 
giving way, and allowing Duncan, who 
waited at table, to bring forth from this 
aperture to the kitchen a steaming dish 
of salmon, while he spoke some words 
in Gaelic to the servants at the other end 
of the tube. He even forgot to be sur- 
prised at the appearance of little Mairi, 
with whom he had shaken hands a little 
while before, coming round the table with 
potatoes. He did not, as a rule, shake 
hands with servant-maids, but was not 
this fair-haired, wistful-eyed girl some 
relative, friend or companion of Shiela’s ? 
and had he not already begun to lose all 
perception of the incongruous or the ab- 
surd in the strange pervading charm with 
which Sheila’s presence filled the place ? 

He suddenly found Mackenzie’s deep- 
set eyes fixed upon him, and became 
aware that the old man had been myste- 
riously announcing to Ingram that there 
were more political movements abroad 
than people fancied. Sheila sat still and 
listened to her father as he expounded 
these things, and showed that, although 
at a distance, he could perceive the signs 
of the times. Was it not incumbent, 
moreover, on a man who had to look 
after a number of poor and simple folks, 
that he should be on the alert ? 

“ It iss not bekass you will live in Lon- 
don you will know everything,” said the 
King of Borva, with a certain significance 
in his tone. ‘‘There iss many things a 
man does not see at his feet that another 
man will see who is a good way off. The 
International, now — ” 

He glanced furtively at Lavender. 

“ — 1 hef been told there will be agents 


going out every day to all parts of this 
country and other countries, and they 
will hef plenty of money to live like 
gentlemen, and get among the poor peo- 
ple, and fill their minds with foolish non- 
sense about a revolution. Oh yes, I hear 
about it all, and there iss many members 
of Parliament in it ; and it iss every day 
they will get farther and farther, all work- 
ing hard, though no one sees them who 
does not understand to be on the watch.” 

Here again the young man received 
a quiet, scrutinizing glance ; and it began 
to dawn upon him, to his infinite aston- 
ishment, that Mackenzie half suspected 
him of being an emissary of the Interna- 
tional. In the case of any other man he 
would have laughed and paid no heed, 
but how could he permit Sheila’s father 
to regard him with any such suspicion ? 

“ Don’t you think, sir,” he said boldly, 
‘‘that those Internationalists are a lot of 
incorrigible idiots ?” 

As if a shrewd observer of men and 
motives were to be deceived by such a 
protest ! Mackenzie regarded him with 
increased suspicion, although he endeav- 
ored to conceal the fact that he was 
watching the young man from time to 
time. Lavender saw all the favor he 
had won during the day disappearing, 
and moodily wondered when he should 
have a chance of explanation. 

After dinner they went outside and 
sat down on a bench in the garden, and 
the men lit their cigars. It was a cool 
and pleasant evening. The sun had 
gone down in red fire behind the At- 
lantic, and there was still left a rich glow 
of crimson in the west, while overhead, 
in the pale yellow of the sky, some filmy 
clouds of rose-color lay motionless. How 
calm was the sea out there, and the whiter 
stretch of water coming into Loch Roag ! 
The cool air of the twilight was scented 
with sweetbrier. The wash of the ripples 
along the coast could be heard in the 
stillness. It was a time for lovers to sit 
by the sea, careless of the future or the 
past. 

But why would this old man keep 
prating of his political prophecies ? 
Lavender asked of himself. Sheila had 
spoken scarcely a word all the evening ; 


26 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


and of what interest could it be to her 
to listen to theories of revolution and 
the dangers besetting our hot-headed 
youth ? She merely stood by the side 
of her father, with her hand on his 
shoulder. He noticed, however, . that 
she paid particular attention whenever 
Ingram spoke ; and he wondered whether 
she perceived that Ingram was partly 
humoring the old man, at the same time 
that he was pleasing himself with a series 
of monologues, interrupted only by his 
cigar. 

“That is true enough, Mr. Mackenzie,” 
Ingram would say, lying back with his 
two hands clasped round his knee, as 
usual : “ you’ve got to be careful of the 
opinions that are spread abroad, even 
in Borva, where not much danger is to 
be expected. But I don’t suppose our 
young men are more destructive in their 
notions than young men always have 
been. You know every young fellow 
starts in life by knocking down all the 
beliefs he finds before him, and then he 
spends the rest of his life in setting them 
up again. It is only after some years 
he gets to know that all the wisdom of 
the world lies in the old commonplaces 
he once despised. He finds that the old 
familiar ways are the best, and he sinks 
into being a commonplace person, with 
much satisfaction to himself. My friend 
Lavender, now, is continually charging 
me with being commonplace. I admit 
the charge. I have drifted back into all 
the old ways and beliefs — about religion 
and marriage and patriotism, and what 
not— that ten years ago I should have 
treated with ridicule.” 

“ Suppose the process continues ?” sug- 
gested Lavender, with some evidence of 
pique. 

“Suppose it does,” continued Ingram 
carelessly. “Ten years hence I may be 
proud to become a vestryman, and have 
the most anxious care about the adminis- 
tration of the rates. I shall be looking 
after the drainage of houses and the 
treatment of paupers and the manage- 
ment of Sunday schools — But all this 
is an invasion of your province, Sheila,” 
he suddenly added, looking up to her. 

The girl laughed, and said, “Then I 


have been commonplace from the begin- 
ning ?” 

Ingram was about to make all manner 
of protests and apologies, when Macken- 
zie said, “ Sheila, it wass time you will go 
in-doors, if you have nothing about your 
head. Go in and sing a song to us, and 
we will listen to you ; and not a sad song, 
but a good merry song. These teffles of 
the fishermen, it iss always drownings 
they will sing about from the morning 
till the night.” 

Was Sheila about to sing in this clear, 
strange twilight, while they sat there and 
watched the yellow moon come up be- 
hind the southern hills ? Lavender had 
heard so much of her singing of those 
fishermen’s ballads that he could think 
of nothing more to add to the enchant- 
ment of this wonderful night. But he 
was disappointed. The girl put her hand 
on her father’s head, and reminded him 
that she had had her big greyhound Bras 
imprisoned all the afternoon, that she 
had to go down to Borvabost with a mes- 
sage for some people who were leaving 
by the boat in the morning, and would 
the gentlemen therefore excuse her not 
singing to them for this one evening ? 

“But you cannot go away down to 
Borvabost by yourself, Sheila,” said In- 
gram. “It will be dark before you re- 
turn.” 

“ It will not be darker than this all the 
night through,” said the girl. 

“But I hope you will let us go with 
you,” said Lavender, rather anxiously; 
and she assented with a gracious smile, 
and went to fetch the great deerhound 
that was her constant companion. 

And lo ! he found himself walking with 
a princess in this wonder-land through 
that magic twilight that prevails in north- 
ern latitudes. Mackenzie and Ingram 
had gone on in front. The large deer- 
hound, after regarding him attentively, 
had gone to its mistress’s side, and re- 
mained closely there. Lavender could 
scarcely believe his ears that the girl was 
talking to him lightly and frankly, as 
though she had known him for years, 
and was telling him of all her troubles 
with the folks at Borvabost, and of those 
poor people whom she was now going to 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


V 


see. No sooner did he understand that 
they were emigrants, and that they were 
going to Glasgow before leaving finally 
for America, than in quite an honest and 
enthusiastic fashion he began to bewail 
the sad fate of such poor wretches as 
have to forsake their native land, and to 
accuse the aristocracy of the country of 
every act of selfishness, and to charge 
the government with a shameful indif- 
ference. But Sheila brought him up sud- 
denly. In the gentlest fashion she told 
him what she knew of these poor people, 
and how emigration affected them, and 
so forth, until he was ready to curse the 
hour in which he had blundered into 
taking a side on a question about which 
he cared nothing and knew less. 

“But some other time,” continued 
Sheila, “ I will tell you what we do here, 
and I will show you a great many letters 
I have from friends of mine who have 
gone to Greenock and to New York and 
Canada. Oh yes, it is very bad for the 
old people : they never get reconciled to 
the change — never ; but it is very good 
for the young people, and they are glad 
of it, and are much better off than they 
were here. You will see how proud they 
are of the better clothes they have, and 
of good food, and of money to put in the 
bank ; and how could they get that in 
the Highlands, where the land is so poor 
that a small piece is of no use, and they 
have not money to rent the large sheep- 
farms ? It is very bad to have people go 
away — it is very hard on many of them — 
but what can they do? The piece of 
ground that was very good for the one 
family, that is expected to keep the 
daughters when they marry, and the 
sons when they marry, and then there 
are five or six families to live on it. And 
hard work — that will not do much with 
very bad land and the bad weather we 
have here. The people get downheart- 
ed when they have their crops spoiled 
by the long rain, and they cannot get 
their peats dried ; and very often the 
fishing turns out bad, and they have no 
money at all to carry on the farm. But 
now you will see Borvabost.” 

Lavender had to confess that this won- 
derful princess would persist in talking 


in a very matter-of-fact way. All the 
afternoon, while he was weaving a lumi- 
nous web of imagination around her, she 
was continually cutting it asunder, and 
stepping forth as an authority on the 
growing of some wretched plants or the 
means by which rain was to be excluded 
from window-sills. And now, in this 
strange twilight, when she ought to have 
been' singing of the cruelties of the sea 
or listening to half-forgotten legends of 
mermaids, she was engaged with the 
petty fortunes of men and girls who 
were pleased to find themselves prosper- 
ing in the Glasgow police-force or edu- 
cating themselves in a milliner’s shop in 
Edinburgh. She did not appear con- 
scious that she was a princess. Indeed, 
she seemed to have no consciousness of 
herself at all, and was altogether occu- 
pied in giving him information about 
practical subjects in which he professed 
a profound interest he certainly did not 
feel. 

But even Sheila, when they had reach- 
ed the loftiest part of their route, and 
could see beneath them the island and 
the water surrounding it, was struck by 
the exceeding beauty of the twilight; 
and as for her companion, he remem- 
bered it many a time thereafter as if it 
were a dream of the sea. Before them 
lay the Atlantic — a pale line of blue, 
still, silent and remote. Overhead, the 
sky was of a clear, pale gold, with heavy 
masses of violet cloud stretched across 
from north to south, and thickening as 
they got near to the horizon. Down at 
their feet, near the shore, a dusky line 
of huts and houses was scarcely visible ; 
and over these lay a pale blue film of 
peat-smoke that did not move in the 
still air. Then they , saw the bay into 
which the White Water runs, and they 
could trace the yellow glimmer of the 
river stretching into the island through 
a level valley of bog and morass. Far 
away, toward the east, lay the bulk of 
the island — dark green undulations of 
moorland and pasture ; and there, in the 
darkness, the gable of one white house 
had caught the clear light of the sky, 
and was gleaming westward like a star. 
But all this was as nothing to the glory 


28 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


that began to shine in the south-east, 
where the sky was of a pale violet over 
the peaks of Mealasabhal and Suaina- 
bhal. There, into the beautiful dome, 
rose the golden crescent of the moon, 
warm in color, as though it still retained 
the last rays of the sunset. A line of 
quivering gold fell across Loch Roag, 
and touched the black hull and spars of 
the boat in which Sheila had been sail- 
ing in the morning. That bay down 
there, with its white sands and massive 
rocks, its still expanse of water, and its 
background of mountain - peaks palely 
colored by the yellow moonlight, seem- 
ed really a home for a magic princess 
who was shut off from all the world. 
But here, in front of them, was another 
sort of sea and another sort of life — a 
small fishing - village hidden under a 
cloud of pale peat-smoke, and fronting 
the great waters of the Atlantic itself, 
which lay under a gloom of violet clouds. 

“ Now,” said Sheila with a smile, “we 
have not always weather as good as this 
in the island. Will you not sit on the 
bench over there with Mr. Ingram, and 
wait until my papa and I come up from 
the village again ?” 

“ May not I go down with you ?” 

“ No. The dogs would learn you were 
a stranger, and there would be a great 
deal of noise, and there will be many of 
the poor people asleep.” 

So Sheila had her way ; and she and 
her father went down the hillside into 
the gloom of the village, while Lavender 
went to join his friend Ingram, who was 
sitting on the wooden bench, silently 
smoking a clay pipe. 

“Well, I have never seen the like of 
this,” said Lavender in his impetuous' 
way : “ it is worth going a thousand miles 
to see. Such colors and such clearness ! 
and then the splendid outlines of those 
mountains, and the grand sweep of this 
loch ! This is the sort of thing that drives 
me to despair, and might make one vow 
never to touch a brush again. And 
Sheila says it will be like this all the 
night through.” 

He was unaware that he had spoken 
of her in a very familiar way, but In- 
gram noticed it. 


“Ingram,” he said suddenly, “that is 
the first girl I have ever seen whom I 
should like to marry.” 

“Stuff!” 

“ But it is true. I have never seen any 
one like her — so handsome, so gentle, 
and yet so very frank in setting you right. 
And then she is so sensible, you know, 
and not too proud to have much interest 
in all sorts of common affairs — ” 

There was a smile in Ingram’s face, 
and his companion stopped in some 
vexation: “You are not a very sympa- 
thetic confidant.” 

“Because I know the story of old. 
You have told it me about twenty wo- 
men, and it is always the same. I tell 
you, you don’t know anything at all 
about Sheila Mackenzie yet : perhaps you 
never may. I suppose you will make a 
heroine of her, and fall in love with her 
for a fortnight, and then go back to Lon- 
don and get cured by listening to the 
witticisms of Mrs. Lorraine.” 

“Thank you very much.” 

“Oh, I didn’t mean to offend you. 
Some day, no doubt, you will love a 
woman for what she is, not for what you 
fancy her to be ; but that is a piece of 
good-fortune that seldom occurs to a 
youth of your age. To marry in a 
dream, and wake up six months after- 
ward — that is the fate of ingenuous 
twenty-three. But don’t you let Mac- 
kenzie hear you talk of marrying Sheila, 
or he’ll have some of his fishermen throw 
you into Loch Roag.” 

“ There, now, that is one point I can’t 
understand about her,” said Lavender 
eagerly. “ How can a girl of her shrewd- 
ness and good sense have such a belief 
in that humbugging old idiot of a father 
of hers, who fancies me a political emis- 
sary, and plays small tricks to look like 
diplomacy ? It is always * My papa can 
do this,’ and ‘ My papa can do that,’ and 
* There is no one at all like my papa.’ 
And she is continually fondling him, and 
giving little demonstrations of affection, 
of which he takes no more notice than 
if he were an Arctic bear.” 

Ingram looked up with some surprise 
in his face. “You don’t mean to say, 
Lavender,” he said slowly, “that you 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


29 


are already jealous of the girl’s own 
father ?” 

He could not answer, for at this mo- 
ment Sheila, her father and the big grey- 
hound came up the hill. And again it 
was Lavender’s good fortune to walk 
with Sheila across the moorland path 
they had traversed some little time be- 
fore. And now the moon was still high- 
er in the heavens, and the yellow lane 
of light that crossed the violet waters of 
Loch Roag quivered in a deeper gold. 
The night-air was scented with the Dutch 
clover growing down by the shore. They 
rould hear the curlew whistling and the 


plover calling amid that monotonous 
plash of the waves that murmured all 
around the coast. When they returned 
to the house the darker waters of the 
Atlantic and the purple clouds of the 
west were shut out from sight, and be- 
fore them there was only the liquid plain 
of Loch Roag, with its pathway of yel- 
low fire, and far away on the other side 
the shoulders and peaks of the southern 
mountains, that had grown gray and 
clear and sharp in the beautiful twilight. 
And this was Sheila’s home. 





PART II 


CHAPTER IV. 
ROMANCE-TIME. 

E ARLY morning at Borva, fresh, 
luminous and rare ; the mountains 
in the south grown pale and cloud-like 
under a sapphire sky; the sea ruffled 
into a darker blue by a light breeze from 
the west : and the sunlight lying hot on 
the red gravel and white shells around 
Mackenzie’s house. There is an odor 
of sweetbrier about, hovering in the 
warm, still air, except at such times as 
the breeze freshens a bit, and brings 
round the shoulder of the hill the cold, 
strange scent of the rocks and the sea 
beyond. 

And on this fresh and pleasant morn- 
ing Sheila sat in the big garden-seat in 
front of the house, talking to the stranger 
to whom she had been introduced the 
day before. He was no more a stranger, 
however, to all appearance, for what 
could be more frank and friendly than 
their conversation, or more bright and 
winning than the smile with which she 
frequently turned to speak or to listen ? 
Of course this stranger could not be her 
friend as Mr. Ingram was — that was im- 
possible. But he talked a great deal 
more than Mr. Ingram, and was appar- 
ently more anxious to please and be 
pleased ; and indeed was altogether very 
winning and courteous and pleasant in 
his ways. Beyond this vague impres- 
sion, Sheila ventured upon no further 
comparison between the two men. If 
her older friend had been down, she 
would doubtless have preferred talking 
to him about all that had happened in 
the island since his last visit ; but here 
was this newer friend thrown, as it were, 
upon her hospitality, and eager, with a 
most respectful and yet simple and friend- 
ly interest, to be taught all that Ingram 
already knew. Was he not, too, in mere 
appearance like one of the princes she 
had read of in many an ancient ballad 
—tall and handsome and yellow-haired, 


fit to have come sailing over the sea, with 
a dozen merry comrades, to carry off 
some sea-king’s daughter to be his bride ? 
Sheila began to regret that the young 
man knew so little about the sea and 
the northern islands and those old-time 
stories ; but then he was very anxious to 
learn. 

“You must say Mach-Klyoda instead 
of Macleod,” she was saying to him, “if 
you like Styornoway better than Storno- 
way. It is the Gaelic, that is all.” 

“Oh, it is ever so much prettier,” said 
young Lavender with a quite genuine 
enthusiasm in his face, not altogether 
begotten of the letter y ; “and indeed I 
don’t think you can possibly tell how 
singularly pleasant and quaint it is to an 
English ear to hear just that little soften- 
ing of the vowels that the people have 
here. I suppose you don’t notice that 
they say gyarden for garden — ” 

“ They !” As if he had paid attention 
to the pronunciation of any one except 
Sheila herself ! 

“ — but not quite so hard as I pro- 
nounce it. And so with a great many 
other words, that are softened and sweet- 
ened, and made almost poetical in their 
sound by the least bit of inflection. How 
surprised and pleased English ladies 
would be to hear you speak ! Oh, I beg 
your pardon — I did not mean to — I — I 
beg your pardon — ” 

Sheila seemed a little astonished by 
her companion’s evident mortification, 
and said with a smile, “ If others speak 
so in the island, of course I must too ; 
and you say it does not shock you.” 

His distress at his own rudeness now 
found an easy vent. He protested that 
no people could talk English like the 
people of Lewis. He gave Sheila to 
understand that the speech of English 
folks was as the croaking of ravens 
compared with the sweet tones of the 
northern isles ; and this drew him on 
to speak of his friends in the South and 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


31 


of London, and of the chances of Sheila 
ever going thither. 

“ It must be so strange never to have 
seen London,” he said. “Don’t you 
ever dream of what it is like ? Don’t 
you ever try to think of a great space, 
nearly as big as this island, all covered 
over with large houses, the roads be- 
tween the houses all made of stone, and 
great bridges going over the rivers, with 
railway-trains standing ? By the way, 
you have never seen a railway-engine !” 

He looked at her for a moment in 
astonishment, as if he had not hitherto 
realized to himself the absolute ignorance 
of the remote princess. Sheila, with some 
little touch of humor appearing in her 
calm eyes, said, "But I am not quite 
ignorant of all these things. I have 
seen pictures of them, and my papa has 
described them to me so often that I will 
feel as if I had seen them all ; and I do 
not think I should be surprised, except, 
perhaps, by the noise of the big towns. 
It was many a time my papa told me of 
that ; but he says I cannot understand 
it, nor the great distance of land you 
travel over to get to London. That is 
what I do not wish to see. I was often 
thinking of it, and that to pass so many 
places that you do not know would make 
you very sad.” 

“That can be easily avoided,” he said 
lightly. “When you go to London, you 
must go from Glasgow or Edinburgh 
in a night -train, and fall fast asleep, 
and in the morning you will find your- 
self in London, without having seen 
anything.” 

“Just as if one had gone across a 
great distance of sea, and come to an- 
other island you will never see before,” 
said Sheila, with the gray-blue eyes under 
the black eyelashes grown strange and 
distant. # 

“But you must not think of it as a 
melancholy thing,” he said, almost anx- 
iously. “You will find yourself among 
all sorts of gayeties and amusements; 
you will have cheerful people around 
you, and plenty of things to see ; you 
will drive in beautiful parks, and go to 
theatres, and meet people in large and 
brilliant rooms, filled with flowers and 

3 


silver and light. And all through the 
winter, that must be so cold and dark 
up here, you will find abundance of 
warmth and light, and plenty of flowers, 
and every sort of pleasant thing. You 
will hear no more of those songs of 
drowned people ; and you will be afraid 
no longer of the storms, or listen to the 
waves at night ; and by and by, when 
you have got quite accustomed to Lon- 
don, and got a great many friends, you 
might be disposed to stay there alto- 
gether ; and you would grow to think of 
this island as a desolate and melancholy 
place, and never seek to come back.” 

The girl rose suddenly and turned to 
a fuchsia tree, pretending to pick some 
of its flowers. Tears had sprung to her 
eyes unbidden, and it was in rather an 
uncertain voice that she said, still man- 
aging to conceal her face, “ I like to hear 
you talk of those places, but — but I will 
never leave Borva.” 

What possible interest could he have 
in combating this decision so anxiously, 
almost so imploringly ? He renewed his 
complaints against the melancholy of 
the sea and the dreariness of the north- 
ern winters. He described again and 
again the brilliant lights and colors of 
town-life in the South. As a mere mat- 
ter of experience and education she ought 
to go to London ; and had not her papa 
as good as intimated his intention of 
taking her ? 

In the midst of these representations 
a step was heard in the hall, and then 
the girl looked round with a bright light 
on her face. 

“Well, Sheila?” said Ingram, accord- 
ing to his custom, and both the girl’s 
hands were in his the next minute. 
“You are down early. What have you 
been about? Have you been telling 
Mr. Lavender of the Black Horse of 
Loch Suainabhal ?” 

“ No : Mr. Lavender has been telling 
me of London.” 

“And I have been trying to induce 
Miss Mackenzie to pay us a visit, so 
that we may show her the difference be- 
tween a city and an island. But all to 
no purpose. Miss Mackenzie seems to 
like hard winters and darkness and cold ; 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


32 

and as for that perpetual and melan- 
choly and cruel sea, that in the winter- 
time I should fancy might drive anybody 
into a lunatic asylum — ” 

“Ah, you must not talk badly of the 
sea,” said the girl, with all her courage 
and brightness returned to her face : “ it 
is our very good friend. It gives us 
food, and keeps many people alive. It 
carries the lads away to other places, 
and brings them back with money in 
their pockets — ” 

“And sometimes it smashes a few of 
them on the rocks, or swallows up a 
dozen families, and the next morning it 
is as smooth and treacherous and fair as 
if nothing had happened.” 

“But that is not the sea at all,” said 
Sheila: “that is the storms that will 
wreck the boats ; and how can the sea 
help that? When the sea is let alone 
the sea is very good to us.” 

Ingram laughed aloud and patted the 
girl’s head fondly ; and Lavender, blush- 
ing a little, confessed he was beaten, and 
that he would never again, in Miss Mac- 
kenzie’s presence, say anything against 
the sea. 

The King of Borva now appearing, 
they all went in to breakfast ; and Sheila 
sat opposite the window, so that all the 
light coming in from the clear sky and 
the sea was reflected upon her face, and 
lit up every varying expression that cross- 
ed it or that shone up in the beautiful 
deeps of her eyes. Lavender, his own 
face in shadow, could look at her from 
time to time, himself unseen ; and as 
he sat in almost absolute silence, and 
noticed how she talked with Ingram, 
and what deference she paid him, and 
how anxious she was to please him, he 
began to wonder if he should ever be 
admitted to a like friendship with her. 
It was so strange, too, that this hand- 
some, proud-featured, proud-spirited girl 
should so devote herself to the amuse- 
ment of a man like Ingram, and, for- 
getting all the court that should have 
been paid to a pretty woman, seem de- 
termined to persuade him that he was 
conferring a favor upon her by every 
word and look. Of course, Lavender 
admitted to himself, Ingram was a very 


good sort of fellow— a very good sort 
of fellow indeed. If any one was in a 
scrape about money, Ingram would 
come to the rescue without a moment’s 
hesitation, although the salary of a clerk 
in the Board of Trade might have been 
made the excuse, by any other man, for 
a very justifiable refusal. He was very 
clever too — had read much, and all that 
kind of thing. But he was not the sort 
of man you might expect to get on 
well with women. Unless with very in- 
timate friends, he was a trifle silent and 
reserved. Often he was inclined to be 
pragmatic and sententious, and had a 
habit of saying unpleasantly bitter things 
when some careless joke was being made. 
He was a little dingy in appearance ; and 
a man who had a somewhat cold man- 
ner, who was sallow of face, who was 
obviously getting gray, and who was 
generally insignificant in appearance, 
was not the sort of man, one would 
think, to fascinate an exceptionally 
handsome girl, who had brains enough 
to know the fineness of her own face. 
But here was this princess paying atten- 
tions to him such as must have driven 
a more impressionable man out of his 
senses, while Ingram sat quiet and 
pleased, sometimes making fun of her, 
and generally talking to her as if she 
were a child. Sheila had chatted very 
pleasantly with him, Lavender, in the 
morning, but it was evident that her re- 
lations with Ingram were of a very dif- 
ferent kind, such as he could not well 
understand. For it was scarcely pos- 
sible that she could be in love with In- 
gram, and yet surely the pleasure that 
dwelt in her expressive face when she 
spoke to him or listened to him was not 
the result of a mere friendship. 

If Lavender had been told at that 
moment that these two jvere lovers, and 
that they were looking forward to an 
early marriage, he would have rejoiced 
with an enthusiasm of joy. He would 
have honestly and cordially shaken In- 
gram by the hand ; he would have made 
plans for introducing the young bride to 
all the people he knew ; and he would 
have gone straight off, on reaching Lon 
don, to buy Sheila a diamond necklace 


A PEINCESS OF THULE. 


33 


even if he had to borrow the money 
from Ingram himself. 

“And have you got rid yet of the 
Airgiod-cearc * Sheila?” said Ingram, 
suddenly breaking in upon these dreams ; 
“or does every owner of hens still pay 
his annual shilling to the Lord of Lewis ?” 

“ It is not away yet,” said the girl, “ but 
when Sir James comes in the autumn I 
will go over to Stornoway and ask him 
to take away the tax ; and I know he 
will do it, for what is the shilling worth 
to him, when he has spent thousands and 
thousands of pounds on the Lewis ? But 
it will be very hard on some of the poor 
people that only keep one or two hens ; 
and I will tell Sir James of all that — ” 

“You will do nothing of the kind, 
Sheila,” said her father impatiently. 
“What is the Airgiod-cearc to you, that 
you will go over to Stornoway only to 
be laughed at and make a fool of your- 
* self?” 

“ That is nothing, not anything at all,” 
said the girl, “ if Sir James will only take 
away the tax.” 

“Why, Sheila, they would treat you as 
another Lady Godiva !” said Ingram, 
with a good-humored smile. 

“But Miss Mackenzie is quite right,” 
exclaimed Lavender, with a sudden flush 
of color leaping into his handsome face 
and an honest glow of admiration into 
his eyes. “I think it is a very noble 
thing for her to do, and nobody, either 
in Stornoway or anywhere else, would 
be such a brute as to laugh at her for 
trying to help those poor people, who 
have not too many friends and defenders, 
God knows !” 

Ingram looked surprised. Since when 
had the young gentleman across the table 
acquired such a singular interest in the 
poorer classes, of whose very existence 
he had for the most part seemed unaware ? 
But the enthusiasm in his face was quite 
honest : there could be no doubt of that. 
As for Sheila, with a beating heart she 
ventured to send to her champion a brief 
and timid glance of gratitude, which the 
.young man observed, and never forgot. 

“You will not know what it is all 

* Pronounced Argyud - chark ; literally, “hen- 
money.” 


about/’ said the King of Borva with a 
peevish air, as though it were too bad 
that a person of his authority should 
have to descend to petty details about a 
hen-tax. “ It is many and many a tax 
and a due Sir James will take away from 
his tenants in the Lewis, and he will 
spend more money a thousand times 
than ever he will get back ; and it was 
this Airgiod-cearc, it will stand in the 
place of a great many other things taken 
away, just to remind the folk that they 
have not their land all in their own right. 
It is many things you will have to do in 
managing the poor people, not to let 
them get too proud, or forgetful of what 
they owe to you ; and now there is no 
more tacksmen to be the masters of the 
small crofters, and the crofters they would 
think they were landlords themselves if 
there were no dues for them to pay.” 

“ I have heard of those middlemen : 
they were dreadful tyrants and thieves, 
weren’t they ?” said Lavender. Ingram 
kicked his foot under the table. “ I mean, 
that was the popular impression of them 
— a vulgar error, I presume,” continued 
the young man in the coolest manner. 
“And so you have got rid of them? 
Well, I dare say many of them were 
honest men, and suffered very unjustly 
in common report.” 

Mackenzie answered nothing, but his 
daughter said quickly, “ But, you know, 
Mr. Lavender, they have not gone away 
merely because they cease to have the 
letting of the land to the crofters. They 
have still their old holdings, and so have 
the crofters in most cases. Every one 
now holds direct from the proprietor, 
that is all.” 

“ So that there is no difference between 
the former tacksman and his serf except 
the relative size of their farms ?” 

“Well, the crofters have no leases, but 
the tacksmen have,” said the girl some- 
what timidly ; and then she added, “ But 
you have not decided yet, Mr. Ingram, 
what you will do to-day. It is too clear 
for the salmon-fishing. Will you go 
over to Meavig, and show Mr. Lavender 
the Bay of Uig and the Seven Hunters ?” 

“Surely we must show him Borvabost 
first, Sheila,” said Ingram. “He saw 


34 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


nothing of it last night in the dark ; and 
I think, if you offered to take Mr. Lav- 
ender round in your boat and show him 
what a clever sailor you are, he would 
prefer that to walking over the hill.” 

“ I can take you all round in the boat, 
certainly,” said the girl with a quick 
blush of pleasure ; and forthwith a mes- 
sage was sent to Duncan that cushions 
should be taken down to the Maighdean- 
mhara, the little vessel of which Sheila 
was both skipper and pilot. 

How beautiful was the fair sea-picture 
that lay around them as the Maighdean- 
mhara stood out to the mouth of Loch 
Roag on this bright summer morning ! 
Sheila sat in the stern of the small boat, 
her hand on the tiller. Lufrath lay at 
her feet, his nose between the long and 
shaggy paws. Duncan, grave and watch- 
ful as to the wind and the points of the 
coast, sat amidships, with the sheets of 
the mainsail held fast, and superintended 
the seamanship of his young mistress 
with a respectful but most evident pride. 
And as Ingram had gone off with Mac- 
kenzie to walk over to the White Water 
before going down to Borvabost, Frank 
Lavender was Sheila’s sole companion 
out in this wonderland of rock and sea 
and blue sky. 

He did not talk much to her, and she 
was so well occupied with the boat that 
he could regard with impunity the shift- 
ing lights and graces of her face and all 
the wonder and winning depths of her 
eyes. The sea was blue around them ; 
the sky overhead had not a speck of 
cloud in it; the white sand-bays, the 
green stretches of pasture and the far 
and spectral mountains trembled in a 
haze of sunlight. Then there was all 
the delight of the fresh and cool wind, 
the hissing of the water along the boat, 
and the joyous rapidity with which the 
small vessel, lying over a little, ran 
through the crisply curling waters, and 
brought into view the newer wonders of 
the opening sea. 

Was it not all a dream, that he should 
be sitting by the side of this sea-princess, 
who was attended only by her deerhound 
and the tall keeper ? And if a dream, 
why should it not go on for ever ? To 


live for ever in this magic land — to have 
the princess herself carry him in this 
little boat into the quiet bays of the isl- 
ands, or out at night, in moonlight, on 
the open sea — to forget for ever the 
godless South and its social phantasma- 
goria, and live in this beautiful and dis- 
tant solitude, with the solemn secrets of 
the hills and the moving deep for ever 
present to the imagination, might not 
that be a nobler life ? And some day or 
other he would take this island-princess 
up to London, and he would bid the 
women that he knew — the scheming 
mothers and the doll-like daughters — 
stand aside from before this perfect work 
of God. She would carry with her the 
mystery of the sea in the deeps of her 
eyes, and the music of the far hills 
would be heard in her voice, and all the 
sweetness and purity and brightness of 
the clear summer skies would be mirror- 
ed in her innocent soul. She would ap-* 
pear in London as some wild-plumaged 
bird hailing from distant climes, and be- 
fore she had lived there long enough to 
grow sad, and have the weight of the city 
clouding the brightness of her eyes, she 
would be spirited away again into this 
strange sea-kingdom, where there seem- 
ed to be perpetual sunshine and the light 
music of the waves. 

Poor Sheila ! She little knew what was 
expected of her, or the sort of drama 
into which she was being thrown as a 
central figure. She little knew that she, 
a simple Highland girl, was being trans- 
formed into a wonderful creature of ro- 
mance, who was to put to shame the 
gentle dames and maidens of London 
society, and do many other extraordinary 
things. But what would have appeared 
the most extraordinary of all these spec- 
ulations, if she had only known of them, 
was the assumption that she would marry 
Frank Lavender. That the young man 
had quite naturally taken for granted, 
but perhaps only as a basis for his im- 
aginative scenes. In order to do these 
fine things she would have to be married 
to somebody, and why not to himself ? 
Think of the pride he would have in 
leading this beautiful girl, with her quaint 
manners and fashion of speech, into a 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


35 


London drawing-room ! Would not ev- 
ery one wish to know her ? Would not 
every one listen to her singing of those 
Gaelic songs? for of course she must 
sing well. Would not all his artist friends 
be anxious to paint her ? and she would 
go to the Academy to convince the 
loungers there how utterly the canvas 
had failed to catch the light and dignity 
and sweetness of her face. 

When Sheila spoke he started. 

“ Did you not see it ?” 

“What ?” 

“The seal : it rose for a moment just 
over there,” said the girl, with a great 
interest visible in her eyes. 

The beautiful dreams he had been 
dreaming were considerably shattered 
by this interruption. How could a fairy 
princess be so interested in some com- 
mon animal showing its head out of the 
sea? It also occurred to him, just at 
this moment, that if Sheila and Mairi 
went out in this boat by themselves, 
they must be in the habit of hoisting 
up the mainsail ; and was such rude and 
coarse work befitting the character of a 
princess ? 

“ He looks very like a black man in 
the water when his head comes up,” 
said Sheila — “when the water is smooth 
so that you will see him look at you. 
But I have not told you yet about the 
Black Horse that Alister-nan-Each saw 
at Loch Suainabhal one night. Loch 
Suainabhal, that is inland and fresh 
water, so it was not a seal ; but Alister 
was going along the shore, and he saw 
it lying up by the road, and he looked 
at it for a long time. It was quite black, 
and he thought it was a boat ; but when 
he came near he saw it begin to move, 
and then it went down across the shore 
and splashed into the loch. And it had 
a head bigger than a horse, and quite 
black, and it made a noise as it went 
down the shore to the loch.” 

“Don’t you think Alister must have 
been taking a little whisky, Miss Mac- 
kenzie ?” 

“No, not that, for he came to me just 
after he will see the beast.” 

“ And do you really believe he saw such 
an animal?” said Lavender with a smile. 


“I do not know,” said the girl grave- 
ly. “ Perhaps it was only a fright, and 
he imagined he saw it; but I do not 
know it is impossible there can be such 
an animal at Loch Suainabhal. But 
that is nothing : it is of no consequence. 
But I have seen stranger things than the 
Black Horse, that many people will not 
believe.” 

“May I ask what they are?” he said 
gently. 

“ Some other time, perhaps, I will tell 
you ; but there is much explanation 
about it, and, you see, we are going in 
to Borvabost.” 

Was this, then, the capital of the small 
empire over which the princess ruled ? 
He saw before him but a long row of 
small huts or hovels resembling bee- 
hives, which stood above the curve of a 
white bay, and at one portion of the bay 
was a small creek, near which a number 
of large boats, bottom upward, lay on 
the beach. What odd little dwellings 
those were ! The walls, a few feet high, 
were built of rude blocks of stone or 
slices of turf, and from those low sup- 
ports rose a rounded roof of straw, which 
was thatched over by a further layer of 
turf. There were few windows, and no 
chimneys at all — not even a hole in the 
roof. And what was meant by the two 
men who, standing on one of the turf 
walls, were busily engaged in digging 
into the rich brown and black thatch 
and heaving it into a cart ? Sheila had 
to explain to him that while she was 
doing everything in her power to get the 
people to suffer the introduction of win- 
dows, it was hopeless to think of chim- 
neys ; for by carefully guarding against 
the egress of the peat-smoke, it slowly 
saturated the thatch of the roof, which 
at certain periods of the year was then 
taken off to dress the fields, and a new 
roof of straw put on. 

By this time they had run the Maigh- 
dean-mhara — the “Sea Maiden” — into 
a creek, and were climbing up the steep 
beach of shingle that had been worn 
smooth by the unquiet waters of the 
Atlantic. 

“And will you want to speak to me, 
Ailasa?” said Sheila, turning to a small 


36 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


girl who had approached her somewhat 
diffidently. 

She was a pretty little thing, with a 
round fair face tanned by the sun, brown 
hair and soft dark eyes. She was bare- 
headed, bare -footed and bare -armed, 
but she was otherwise smartly dressed, 
and she held in her hand an enormous 
flounder, apparently about half as heavy 
as herself. 

“Will ye hef the fesh, Miss Sheila?” 
said the small Ailasa, holding out the 
flounder, but looking down all the same. 

“ Did you catch it yourself, Ailasa ?” 

“Yes, it wass Donald and me: we 
wass out in a boat, and Donald had a 
line.” 

“And it is a present for me?” said 
Sheila, patting the small head and its 
wild and soft hair. “ Thank you, Ailasa. 
But you must ask Donald to carry it up 
to the house and give it to Mairi. I 
cannot take it with me just now, you 
know.” 

There was a small boy cowering be- 
hind one of the upturned boats, and by 
his furtive peepings showing that he was 
in league with his sister. Ailasa, not 
thinking that she was discovering his 
whereabouts, turned quite naturally in 
that direction, until she was suddenly 
stopped by Lavender, who called to her 
and put his hand in his pocket. But 
he was too late. Sheila had stepped in, 
and with a quick look, which was all 
the protest that was needed, shut her 
hand over the half crown he had in his 
fingers. 

“Never mind, Ailasa,” she said. “Go 
away and get Donald, and bid him carry 
the fish up to Mairi.” 

Lavender put up the half crown in his 
pocket in a somewhat dazed fashion : 
what he chiefly knew was that Sheila 
had for a moment held his hand in hers 
and that her eyes had met his. 

Well, that little incident of Ailasa and 
the flounder was rather pleasant to him. 
It did not shock the romantic associa- 
tions he had begun to weave around his 
fair companion. But when they had 
gone up to the cottages— Mackenzie and 
Ingram not yet having arrived — and 
when Sheila proceeded to tell him about 


the circumstances of the fishermen’s 
lives, and to explain how such and such 
things were done in the fields and in the 
pickling-houses, and so forth, Lavender 
was a little disappointed. Sheila took 
him into some of the cottages, or rather 
hovels, and he vaguely knew in the 
darkness that she sat down by the low 
glow of the peat-fire, and began to ask 
the women about all sorts of improve- 
ments in the walls and windows and 
gardens, and what not. Surely it was 
not for a princess to go advising people 
about particular sorts of soap, or offer- 
ing to pay for a pane of glass if the 
husband of the woman would make the 
necessary aperture in the stone wall. 
The picture of Sheila appearing as a 
sea-princess in a London drawing-room 
was all very beautiful in its way, but 
here she was discussing as to the quality 
given to broth by the addition of a cer- 
tain vegetable which she offered to send 
down from her own garden if the cot- 
tager in question would try to grow it. 

“ I wonder, Miss Mackenzie,” he said 
at length, when they got outside, his 
eyes dazed with the light and smarting 
with the peat-smoke — “ I wonder you can 
trouble yourself with such little matters 
that those people should find out for 
themselves.” 

The girl looked up with some surprise : 
“That is the work I have to do. My 
papa cannot do everything in the island.” 

“But what is the necessity for your 
bothering yourself about such things ? 
Surely they ought to be able to look after 
their own gardens and houses. It is no 
degradation — certainly not, for anything 
you interested yourself in would become 
worthy of attention by the very fact — 
but, after all, it seems such a pity you 
should give up your time to these com- 
monplace details.” 

“But some one must do it,” said the 
girl quite innocently, “ and my papa has 
no time. And they will be very good in 
doing what I ask them — every one in 
the island.” 

Was this a willful affectation ? he said 
to himself. Or was she really incapable 
of understanding that there was any- 
thing incongruous in a young lady of 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


37 


her position, education and refinement 
busying herself with the curing of fish 
and the cost of lime ? He had himself 
marked the incongruity long ago, when 
Ingram had been telling him of the re- 
mote and beautiful maiden whose only 
notions of the world had been derived 
from literature — who was more familiar 
with the magic land in which Endymion 
wandered than with any other — and that 
at the same time she was about as good 
as her father at planning a wooden bridge 
over a stream. When Lavender had got 
outside again — when he found himself 
walking with her along the white beach 
in front of the blue Atlantic — she was 
again the princess of his dreams. He 
looked at her face, and he saw in her 
eyes that she must be familiar with all 
the romantic nooks and glades of Eng- 
lish poetry. The plashing of the waves 
down there and the music of her voice 
recalled the sad legends of the fisher- 
men he hoped to hear her sing. But 
ever and anon there occurred a jarring 
recollection — whether arising from a con- 
tradiction between his notion of Sheila 
and the actual Sheila, or whether from 
some incongruity in himself, he did not 
stop to consider. He only knew that a 
beautiful maiden who had lived by the 
sea all her life, and who had followed 
the wanderings of Endymion in the en- 
chanted forest, need not have been so 
particular about a method of boiling po- 
tatoes, or have shown so much interest 
in a pattern for children’s frocks. 

Mackenzie and Ingram met them. 
There was the usual “Well, Sheila?” 
followed by a thousand questions about 
the very things she had been inquiring 
into. That was one of the odd points 
about Ingram that puzzled and some- 
times vexed Lavender; for if you are 
walking home at night it is inconvenient 
to be accompanied by a friend who would 
stop to ask about the circumstances of 
some old crone hobbling along the pave- 
ment, or who could, on his own door- 
step, stop to have a chat with a garrulous 
policeman. Ingram was about as odd 
as Sheila herself in the attention he paid 
to those wretched cotters and their doings. 
He could not advise on the important 


subject of broth, but he would have 
tasted it by way of discovery, even if it 
had been presented to him in a tea-cup. 
He had already been prowling round 
the place with Mackenzie. He had in- 
spected the apparatus in the creek for 
hauling up the boats. He had visited 
the curing-houses. He had examined 
the heaps of fish drying on the beach. 
He had drunk whisky with John the 
Piper and shaken hands with Alister- 
nan-Each. And now he had come to 
tell Sheila that the piper was bringing 
down luncheon from Mackenzie’s house, 
and that after they had eaten and drunk 
on the white beach they would put out 
the Maighdean-mhara once more to sea, 
and sail over to Mevaig, that the stranger 
might see the wondrous sands of the 
Bay of Uig. 

But it was not in consonance with the 
dignity of a king that his guests should 
eat from off the pebbles, like so many 
fishermen, and when Mairi and another 
girl brought down the baskets, luncheon 
was placed in the stern of the small 
vessel, while Duncan got up the sails 
and put out from the stone quay. As 
for John the Piper, was he insulted at 
having been sent on a menial errand ? 
They had scarcely got away from the 
shore when the sounds of the pipes was 
wafted to them from the hillside above, 
and it was the "Lament of Mackrim- 
mon ” that followed them out to sea : 

Mackrimmon shall no more return. 

Oh never, never more return ! 

That was the wild and ominous air that 
was skirling up on the hillside ; and 
Mackenzie’s face, as he heard it, grew 
wroth. “That teffle of a piper John!” 
he said with an involuntary stamp of 
his foot. “ What for will he be playing 
Cha till mi tuilich ?" 

"It is out of mischief, papa,” said 
Sheila — “that is all.” 

“It will be more than mischief if I 
burn his pipes and drive him out of 
Borva. Then there will be no more of 
mischief.” 

“It is very bad of John to do that,” 
said Sheila to Lavender, apparently in 
explanation of her father’s anger, “ for 
we have given him shelter here when 


38 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


there will be no more pipes in all the 
Lewis. It wass the Free Church minis- 
ters, they put down the pipes, for there 
wass too much wildness at the marriages 
when the pipes would play.” 

“And what do the people dance to. 
now ?” asked the young gentleman, who 
seemed to resent this piece of paternal 
government. 

Sheila laughed in an embarrassed 
way. 

“ Miss Mackenzie would rather not tell 
you,” said Ingram. ‘‘The fact is, the 
noble mountaineers of these districts 
have had to fall back on the Jew’s harp. 
The ministers allow that instrument to 
be used — I suppose because there is a 
look of piety in the name. But the dan- 
cing doesn’t get very mad when you 
have two or three young fellows playing 
a strathspey on a bit of trembling wire.” 

“ That teffle of a piper John !” growled 
Mackenzie under his breath ; and so the 
Maighdean-mhara lightly sped on her 
way, opening out the various headlands 
of the islands, until at last she got into 
the narrows by Eilean - Aird - Meinish, 
and ran up the long arm of the sea to 
Mevaig. 

They landed and went up the rocks. 
They passed two or three small white 
houses overlooking the still, green waters 
of the sea, and then, following the line 
of a river, plunged into the heart of 
a strange and lonely district, in which 
there appeared to be no life. The river- 
track took them up a great glen, the 
sides of which were about as sheer as a 
railway - cutting. There were no trees 
or bushes about, but the green pasture 
along the bed of the valley wore its 
brightest colors in the warm sunlight, 
and far up on the hillsides the browns 
and crimsons of the heather and the 
silver-gray of the rocks trembled in the 
white haze of the heat. Over that again 
the blue sky, as still and silent as the 
world below. 

They wandered on, content with idle- 
ness and a fine day. Mr. Mackenzie 
was talking with some little loudness, so 
that Lavender might hear, of Mr. John 
Stuart Mill, and was anxious to convey 
to Ted Ingram that a wise man, who is 


responsible for the well-being of his fel- 
low-creatures, will study all sides of all 
questions, however dangerous. Sheila 
was doing her best to entertain the stran- 
ger, and he, in a dream of his own, was 
listening to the information she gave 
him. How much of it did he carry 
away ? He was told that the gray goose 
built its nest in the rushes at the edge 
of lakes : Sheila knew several nests in 
Borva. Sheila also caught the young 
of the wild-duck when the mother was 
guiding them down the hill-rivulets to 
the sea. She had tamed many of them, 
catching them thus before they could 
fly. The names of most of the moun- 
tains about here ended in bhal, which 
was a Gaelic corruption of the Norse 
fiall , a mountain. There were many 
Norse names all through the Lewis, but 
more particularly toward the Butt. The 
termination dost, for example, at the end 
of many words, meant an inhabited 
place, but she fancied host was Danish. 
And did Mr. Lavender know of the 
legend connected with the air of Cha 
till , cha till ?ni tuille ? 

Lavender started as from a trance, 
with an impression that he had been 
desperately rude. He was about to say 
that the gray gosling in the legend 
could not speak Scandinavian, when he 
was interrupted by Mr. Mackenzie turn- 
ing and asking him if he knew from 
what ports the English smacks hailed 
that came up hither to the cod and the 
ling fishing for a couple of months in 
the autumn. The young man said he 
did not know. There were many fish- 
ermen at Brighton. And when the King 
of Borva turned to Ingram, to see why 
he was shouting with laughter, Sheila 
suddenly announced to the party that 
before them lay the great Bay of Uig. 

It was certainly a strange and impres- 
sive scene. They stood on the top of a 
lofty range of hill, and underneath them 
lay a vast semicircle, miles in extent, of 
gleaming white sand, that had in bygone 
ages been washed in by the Atlantic. 
Into this vast plain of silver whiteness 
the sea, entering by a somewhat narrow 
portal, stretched in long arms of a pale 
blue. Elsewhere, the great crescent of 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


39 


sand was surrounded by a low line of 
rocky hill, showing a thousand tints of 
olive-green and gray and heather-pur- 
ple ; and beyond that again rose the 
giant bulk of Mealasabhal, grown pale 
in the heat, into the southern sky. There 
was not a ship visible along the blue 
plain of the Atlantic. The only human 
habitation to be seen in the strange world 
beneath them was a solitary manse. But 
away toward the summit of Mealasabhal 
two specks slowly circled in the air, which 
Sheila thought were eagles ; and far out 
on the western sea, lying like dusky 
whales in the vague blue, were the Plad- 
da Islands — the remote and unvisited 
Seven Hunters — whose only inhabitants 
are certain flocks of sheep belonging to 
dwellers on the mainland of Lewis. 

The travelers sat down on a low block 
of gneiss to rest themselves, and then 
and there did the King of Borva recite 
his grievances and rage against the Eng- 
lish smacks. Was it not enough that 
they should in passing steal the sheep, 
but that they should also, in mere want- 
onness, stalk them as deer, wounding 
them with rifle-bullets, and leaving them 
to die among the rocks ? Sheila said 
bravely that no one could tell that it 
was the English fishermen who did that 
Why not the crews of merchant-vessels, 
who might be of any nation ? It was 
unfair to charge upon any body of men 
such a despicable act, when there was 
no proof of it whatever. 

“ Why, Sheila,” said Ingram with some 
surprise, 11 you never doubted before that 
it was the English smacks that killed 
the sheep.” 

Sheila cast down her eyes and said 
nothing. 

Was the sinister prophecy of John the 
Piper to be fulfilled ? Mackenzie was so 
much engaged in expounding politics to 
Ingram, and Sheila was so proud to show 
her companion all the wonders of Uig, 
that when they returned to Mevaig in 
the evening the wind had altogether 
gone down and the sea was as a sea of 
glass. But if John the Piper had been 
ready to foretell for Mackenzie the fate 
of Mackrimmon, he had taken means 
to defeat destiny by bringing over from 


Borvabost a large and heavy boat pulled 
by six rowers. These were not strapping 
young fellows, clad in the best blue cloth 
to be got in Stornoway, but elderly men, 
gray, wrinkled, weather-beaten and hard 
of face, who sat stolidly in the boat and 
listened with a sort of bovine gaze to 
the old hunchback’s wicked stories and 
jokes. John was in a mischievous mood, 
but Lavender, in a confidential whisper, 
informed Sheila that her father would 
speedily be avenged on the inconsiderate 
piper. 

“Come, men, sing us a song, quick !” 
said Mackenzie as the party took their 
seats in the stern and the great oars 
splashed into the sea of gold. “ Look 
sharp, John, and no teffle of a drowning 
song !” 

In a shrill, high, querulous voice the 
piper, who was himself pulling one of 
the two stroke oars, began to sing, and 
then the men behind him, gathering 
courage, joined in an octave lower, their 
voices being even more uncertain and 
lugubrious than his own. These poor 
fishermen had not had the musical edu- 
cation of Clan-Alpine’s warriors. The 
performance was not enlivening, and as 
the monotonous and melancholy sing- 
song that kept time to the oars told its 
story in Gaelic, all that the English 
strangers could make out was an occa- 
sional reference to Jura or Scarba or Isla. 
It was, indeed, the song of an exile shut 
up in “sea-worn Mull,” who was com- 
plaining of the wearisome look of the 
neighboring islands. 

“ But why do you sing such Gaelic as 
that, John?” said young Lavender con- 
fidently. “ I should have thought a man 
in your position — the last of the Hebri- 
dean bards — would have known the 
classical Gaelic. Don’t you know the 
classical Gaelic ?” 

“ There iss only the wan sort of Kallic, 
and it is a ferry goot sort of Kallic,” said 
the piper with some show of petulance. 

“Do you mean to tell me you don’t 
know your own tongue ? Do you not 
know what the greatest of all the bards 
wrote about your own island ? — ‘ O et 
praesidium et dulce decus meum, agns , 
Tityre tu patulse recubans sub tegmine 


40 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


Styornoway , Arm a virumque cano, Mac- 
klyoda et Borvabost sub tegmine fagi ?’ ” 

Not only John the Piper, but all the 
men behind him, began to look amazed 
and sorely troubled ; and all the more so 
that Ingram — who had picked up more 
Gaelic words than his friend — came to 
his assistance, and began to talk to him 
in this unknown tongue. They heard 
references in the conversation to persons 
and things with which they were familiar 
in their own language, but still accom- 
panied by much more they could not 
understand. 

The men now began to whisper awe- 
stricken questions to each other ; and at 
last John the Piper could not restrain his 
curiosity. “What in ta name of Kott is 
tat sort of Kallic ?” he asked, with some 
look of fear in his eyes. 

“You are not much of a student, 
John,” said Lavender carelessly, “but 
still, a man in your position should know 
something of your own language. A 
bard, a poet, and not know the classical 
form of your own tongue !” 

“ Is it ta Welsh Kallic ?” cried John 
in. desperation, for he knew that the men 
behind him would carry the story of his 
ignorance all over Borvabost. 

“ The Welsh Gaelic ? No. I see you 
will have to go to school again.” 

“ There iss no more Kallic in ta 
schools,” said the piper, eagerly seizing 
the excuse. “ It iss Miss Sheila, she 
will hef put away all ta Kallic from ta 
schools.” 

“ But you were born half a century 
before Miss Sheila : how is it you neglect- 
ed to learn that form of Gaelic that has 
been sacred to the use of the bards and 
poets since the time of Ossian ?” 

There were no more quips or cranks 
for John the Piper during the rest of the 
pull home. The wretched man relapsed 
into a moody silence and worked me- 
chanically at his oar, brooding over this 
mysterious language of which he had not 
even heard. As for Lavender, he turned 
to Mackenzie and begged to know what 
he thought of affairs in France. 

And so they sailed back to Borvabost 
over the smooth water that lay like a lake 
of gold. Was it not a strange sight to 


see the . Atlantic one vast and smooth 
yellow plain under the great glow of saf- 
fron that spread across the regions of the 
sunset? It was a world of light, un- 
broken but by the presence of a heavy 
coaster that had anchored in the bay, 
and that sent a long line of trembling 
black down on the perfect mirror of the 
sea. As they got near the shore the por- 
tions that were in shadow showed with a 
strange distinctness the dark green of the 
pasture and the sharp outlines of the 
rocks ; and there was a cold scent of sea- 
weed in the evening air. The six heavy 
oars plashed into the smooth bay. The 
big boat was moored to the quay, and its 
passengers landed once more in Borva. 
And when they turned, on their way 
home, to look from the brow of the hill, 
on which Sheila had placed a garden- 
seat, lo ! all the west was on fire, the 
mountains in the south had grown dark 
on their eastern side, and the plain of the 
sea was like a lake of blood, with the 
heavy hull and masts of the coaster grown 
large and solemn and distant. There 
was scarcely a ripple around the rocks 
at their feet to break the stillness of the 
approaching twilight. 

So another day had passed, devoid of 
adventure or incident. Lavender had 
not rescued his wonderful princess from 
an angry sea, nor had he shown prowess 
in slaying a dozen stags, nor in any way 
distinguished himself. To all outward 
appearance the relations of the party 
were the same at night as they had been 
in the morning. But the greatest crises 
of life steal on us imperceptibly, and 
have sometimes occurred and wound us 
in their consequences before we know. 
The memorable things in a man’s career 
are not always marked by some sharp 
convulsion. The youth does not neces- 
sarily marry the girl whom he happens 
to fish out of a mill-pond : his future life 
may be far more definitely shaped for 
him at a prosaic dinner-table, where he 
fancies he is only thinking of the wines. 
We are indeed but as children seated on 
the shore, watching the ripples that come 
on to our feet ; and while the ripples- un- 
ceasingly repeat themselves, and while 
the hour that passes is but as the hour 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


41 


before it, constellation after constellation 
has gone by over our heads unheeded 
and unseen, and we awake with a start 
to find ourselves in a new day, with all 
our former life cut off from us and be- 
come as a dream. 


CHAPTER V. 

SHEILA SINGS. 

A knocking at Ingram’s door. 

“Well, what’s the matter?” 

"Will ye be goin’ to ta fishin’, Mr. 
Ingram ?” 

“ Is that you, Duncan ? How the devil 
have you got over from Mevaig at this 
hour of the morning?” 

“Oh, there wass a bit breeze tis morn- 
ing, and I hef prought over ta Maigh- 
dean-mhara. And there iss a very goot 
ripple on ta watter, if you will tek ta 
other gentleman to try for ta salmon.” 

“ All right ! Hammer at his door until 
he gets up. I shall be ready in ten 
minutes.” 

About half an hour thereafter the two 
young men were standing at the front 
of Mackenzie’s house, examining the 
enormous rod that Duncan had placed 
against the porch. It was still early 
morning, and there was a cold wind 
blowing in from the sea, but there was 
not a speck of cloud in the sky, and the 
day promised to be hot. The plain of 
the Atlantic was no longer a sheet of 
glass : it was rough and gray, and far 
out an occasional quiver of white show- 
ed where a wave was hissing over. There 
was not much of a sea on, but the heavy 
wash of the water round the rocks and 
sandy bays could be distinctly heard in 
the silence of the morning. 

And what was this moving object down 
there by the shore where the Maighdean- 
mhara lay at anchor ? Both the young 
men at once recognized the glimmer of 
the small white feather and the tightly- 
fitting blue dress of the sea-princess. 

"Why, there is Sheila !” cried Ingram. 
“ What in all the world is she about at 
such an hour ?” 

At this moment Duncan came out with 
a book of flies in his hand, and he said 


in rather a petulant way, “ And it iss no 
wonder Miss Sheila will be out. And it 
wass Miss Sheila herself will tell me to 
see if you will go to ta White Water and 
try for a salmon.” 

“And she is bringing up something 
from the boat : I must go and carry it 
for her,” said Lavender, making down 
the path to the shore with the speed of 
a deer. 

When Sheila and he came up the hill 
there was a fine color in the girl’s face 
from her morning’s exertions, but she 
was not disposed to go indoors to rest. 
On the contrary, she was soon engaged 
in helping Mairi to bring in some coffee 
to the parlor, while Duncan cut slices of 
ham and cold beef big enough to have 
provisioned a fishing -boat bound for 
Caithness. Sheila had had her break- 
fast ; so she devoted all her time to wait- 
ing upon her two guests, until Lavender 
could scarcely eat through the embar- 
rassment produced by her noble servi- 
tude. Ingram was not so sensitive, and 
made a very good meal indeed. 

“Where’s your father, Sheila?” said 
Ingram when the last of their prepa- 
rations had been made and they were 
about to start for the river, “ Isn’t he up 
yet ?” 

“My father?” said the girl, with the 
least possible elevation of her eyebrows 
— “he will be down at Borvabost an hour 
ago. And I hope that John the Piper 
will not see him this morning. But we 
must make haste, Mr. Ingram, for the 
wind will fall when the sun gets stronger, 
and then your friend will have no more 
of the fishing.” 

So they set out, and Ingram put 
Sheila’s hand on his arm, and took her 
along with him in that fashion, while the 
tall gillie walked behind with Lavender, 
who was or was not pleased with the ar- 
rangement. The young man, indeed, 
was a trifle silent, but Duncan was in an 
amiable and communicative mood, and 
passed the time in telling him stories of 
the salmon he' had caught, and of the 
people who had tried to catch them and 
failed. Sheila and Ingram certainly 
went a good pace up the hill and round 
the summit of it, and down again into 


42 


A PEINCESS OF THULE . 


the valley of the White Water. The light 
step of the girl seemed to be as full of 
spring as the heather on which she trod ; 
and as for her feet getting wet, the dew 
must have soaked them long ago. She 
was in the brightest of spirits. Lavender 
could hear her laughing in a low pleased 
fashion, and then presently her head 
would be turned up toward her compan- 
ion, and all the light of some humorous 
anecdote would appear in her face and 
in her eloquent eyes, and it would be 
Ingram’s turn to break out into one of 
those short abrupt laughs that had some- 
thing sardonic in them. 

But hark ! From the other side of the 
valley comes another sound, the faint 
and distant skirl of the pipes, and yonder 
is the white-haired hunchback, a mere 
speck in a waste of brown and green 
morass. What is he playing to himself 
now ? 

“ He is a foolish fellow, that John,” 
said the tall keeper, “ for if he comes 
down to Borvabost this morning it iss Mr. 
Mackenzie will fling his pipes in ta sea, 
and he will hef to go away and work in 
ta steamboat. He iss a ferry foolish fel- 
low ; and it wass him tat wass goin’ into 
ta steamboat before, and he went to a 
tailor in Styornoway, and he said to him, 

4 1 want a pair o’ trooSers.’ And the 
tailor said to him, 4 What sort o’ troosers 
iss it you will want?’ And he said to 
him, 4 1 want a pair o’ troosers for a 
steamboat.’ A pair o’ troosers for a 
steamboat ! — he is a teffle of a foolish 
fellow. And it wass him that went in ta 
steamboat with a lot o’ freens o’ his, that 
wass a’ goin’ to Skye to a big weddin’ 
there ; and it wass a very bad passage, 
and when tey got into Portree the cap- 
tain said to him, ‘John, where iss all 
your freens that tey do not come ashore ?’ 
And he said to him, 4 1 hef peen down 
below, sir, and four-thirds o’ ta whole o’ 
them are a’ half-trooned and sick and 
tead.’ Four- thirds o’ ta whole o’ them ! 
And he iss just the ferry man to laugh 
at every other pody when it iss a mistake 
you will make in ta English.” 

41 1 suppose,” said Lavender, 44 you 
found it rather difficult to learn good 
English ?” 


44 Well, sir, I hefna got ta goot Eng- 
lish yet. But Miss Sheila she has put 
away all the Gaelic from the schools, 
and the young ones they will learn more 
of ta good English after that.” 

44 1 wish I knew as much Gaelic as you 
know English,” said the young man. 

44 Oh, you will soon learn. It iss very 
easy if you will only stay in ta island.” 

44 It would take me several months to 
pick it up, I suppose ?” 

44 Oh, yes — nine or six — that will do,” 
said Duncan. 44 You will begin to learn 
ta names o’ ta islands and ta places. 
There now, as far as you can see is ta 
Seann Bheinn ; and it means ta old hill. 
And there is a rock there : it is Stac-nan 
Balg — ” 

Here Duncan looked rather perplexed. 

44 Yes,” said Lavender: “what does 
that mean ?” 

“It means — it means,” said Duncan 
in still greater perplexity, and getting a 
little impatient, “it means — stac, tat iss 
a steep rock : Stac-nan-Balg — it means 
— well , sir, it is ower deep for ta English . ’ ’ 

The tone of mortification in which 
Duncan uttered these words warned 
Lavender that his philological studies 
might as well cease ; and indeed Sheila 
and Ingram had by this time reached 
the banks of the White Water, and were 
waiting Duncan and the majestic rod. 

It was much too bright and pleasant 
a morning for good fishing, but there was 
a fair ripple on the pools of the stream, 
where ever and anon a salmon fresh run 
from the sea would leap into the air, 
showing a gleaming curve of silver to 
the sunlight. The splash of the big fish 
seemed an invitation, and Duncan was 
all anxiety to teach the stranger, who, as 
he fancied, knew nothing about throw- 
ing a fly. Ingram lay down on a rock 
some little distance back from the banks, 
and put his hands beneath his head and 
watched the operations going forward. 
But was it really Duncan who was to 
teach the stranger ? It was Sheila who 
picked out flies for him. It was Sheila 
who held the rod while he put them on 
the line. It was Sheila who told him 
where the bigger salmon usually lay — 
under the opposite bank of the broad 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


43 


and almost lake-like pool into which the 
small but rapid White Water came tum- 
bling and foaming down its narrow chan- 
nel of rocks and stones. 

Then Sheila waited to see her pupil 
begin. He had evidently a little diffi- 
culty about the big double-handed rod, 
a somewhat more formidable engine of 
destruction than the supple little thing 
with which he had whipped the streams 
of Devonshire and Cornwall. 

The first cast sent both flies and a 
lump of line tumbling on to the pool, 
and would have driven the boldest of 
salmon out of its wits. The second 
pretty nearly took a piece out of In- 
gram’s ear, and made him shift his 
quarters with rapidity. Duncan gave 
him up in despair. The third cast drop- 
ped both flies with the lightness of a 
feather in the running waters of the 
other side of the pool ; and the next 
second there was a slight wave along 
the surface, a dexterous jerk with the 
butt, and presently the line was whirled 
out into the middle of the pool, running 
rapidly off the reel from the straining 
rod. 

“ Plenty o’ line, sir, plenty o’ line !” 
shouted Duncan in a wild fever of anx- 
iety, for the fish had plunged suddenly. 

Ingram had come running down to 
the bank. Sheila was all excitement 
and interest as she stood and watched 
every slackening or tightening of the 
line as the fish went up the pool and 
down the pool, and crossed the current 
in his efforts to escape. The only self- 
possessed person, indeed, was Lavender 
himself, who presently said, “ Miss Mac- 
kenzie, won’t you take the rod now and 
have the honor of landing him ? I don’t 
think he will show much more fight.” 

At this moment, however, the line 
slackened suddenly, and the fish threw 
himself clean out of the water, turning 
a complete summersault. It was a dan- 
gerous moment, but the captive was well 
hooked, and in his next plunge Laven- 
der was admonished by Duncan to keep 
a good strain on him. 

‘‘I will take the second one,” Sheila 
promised, ‘‘if you like; but you must 
surely land your first salmon yourself.” 


I suppose nobody but a fisherman can 
understand the generosity of the offer 
made by the young man. To have 
hooked your first salmon — to have its 
first wild rushes and plunges safely over 
— and to offer to another the delight of 
bringing him victoriously to bank ! But 
Sheila knew. And what could have sur- 
passed the cleverness with which he had 
hooked the fish, and the coolness and 
courage he showed throughout the play- 
ing of him, except this more than royal 
offer on the part of the young hero ? 

The fish was losing strength. All the 
line had been got in, although the fore 
finger of the fisherman felt the pulse of 
his captive, as it were, ready for any ex- 
piring plunge. They caught occasional 
glimpses of a large white body gliding 
through the ruddy-brown water. Dun- 
can was down on his knees more than 
once, with the landing-net in his hand, 
but again and again the big fish would 
sheer off, with just such indications of 
power as to make his conqueror cau- 
tious. At length he was guided slowly 
in to the bank. Behind him the landing- 
net was gently let into the water — then 
a quick forward movement, and a four- 
teen-pounder was scooped up and flung 
upon the bank, landing-net and all. 
“ Hurrah !” cried Ingram, and Lavender 
blushed like a school-girl ; and Sheila, 
quite naturally and without thinking, 
shook hands with him and said, “ I con- 
gratulate you;” and there was more 
congratulation in her glad eyes than in 
that simple little gesture. 

It was a good beginning, and of course 
the young man was very much pleased 
to show Sheila that he was no mere lily- 
fingered idler about town. He buckled 
to his work in earnest. With a few more 
casts he soon got into the way of man- 
aging the big rod ; and every time the 
flies fell lightly on the other side of the 
pool, to be dragged with gentle jerks 
across the foaming current of the stream. 
Ingram went back to his couch on the 
rock. He lay and watched the monot- 
onous flinging back of the long rod, the 
light whistle of the line through the air, 
and the careful manipulation of the flies 
through the water. Or was it something 


44 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


else that he was watching — something 
that awakened in his mind a sudden 
sense of surprise and fear, and a new 
and strange consciousness that he had 
been guiltily remiss ? 

Sheila was wholly preoccupied with 
her companion and his efforts. He had 
had one or two rises, but had struck 
either too soon or too late, until at last 
there was a terrific plunge and rush, and 
again the line was whirled out. But 
Duncan did not like the look of it, some- 
how. The fish had been sheering off 
when it was hooked, and the deep 
plunge at the outset was ugly. 

“Now will you take the rod?” said 
Lavender to Sheila. 

But before she could answer the fish 
had come rushing up to the surface, and 
had thrown itself out of the water, so 
that it fell on the opposite bank. It was 
a splendid animal, and Duncan, despite 
his doubts, called out to Ingram to slack- 
en his hold. There was another spring 
into the air, the fish fell with a splash 
into the water, and the line was flying 
helplessly in the air, with the two flies 
floating about. 

“Ay,” said Duncan, with a sigh, “it 
wass foul-hooked. It wass no chance 
of catching him whatever.” 

Lavender was more successful next 
time, however, with a pretty little grilse 
of about half a dozen pounds, that seem- 
ed to have in him the spirit and fight of 
a dozen salmon. How he rushed and 
struggled, how he plunged and sulked, 
how he burrowed along the banks, and 
then ran out to the middle of the pool, 
and then threw himself into the air, 
with the line apparently but not really 
doubling up under him ! All these things 
can only be understood by the fisher- 
man who has played in a Highland 
stream a wild and powerful little grilse 
fresh in from the salt water. And it was 
Sheila who held him captive, who hu- 
mored him when he sulked, and gently 
guided him away from dangerous places, 
and kept him well in hand when he 
tried to cross the current, until at last, all 
the fierceness gone out of him, he let 
himself be tenderly inveigled into the 
side of the pool, where Duncan, by a 


dexterous movement, surrounded him 
with network and placed his shining 
body among the bright green grass. 

But Ingram was not so overjoyed this 
time. He complimented Sheila in a 
friendly way, but he was rather grave, 
and obviously did not care for this busi- 
ness of fishing. And so Sheila, fancy- 
ing that he was rather dull because he 
was not joining in the sport, proposed 
that he should walk back to the house 
with her, leaving Mr. Eavender with 
Duncan. And Ingram was quite ready 
to do so. 

But Lavender protested that he cared 
very little for salmon-fishing. He sug- 
gested that they should all go back 
together. The sun was killing the wind, 
and soon the pools would be as clear as 
glass. Had they not better try in the 
afternoon, when perhaps the breeze 
would freshen ? And so they walked 
back to the house. 

On the garden-seat a book lay open. 
It was Mr. Mill’s Essay on Liberty , and 
it had evidently been left there by Mr. 
Mackenzie, perhaps — who knows ? — to 
hint to his friends from the South that 
he was familiar with the problems of the 
age. Lavender winked to Ingram, but 
somehow his companion seemed in no 
humor for a joke. 

They had luncheon then, and after 
luncheon Ingram touched Lavender on 
the shoulder and said, “ I want to have 
a word with you privately. Let’s walk 
down to the shore.” 

And so they did ; and when they had 
got some little distance from the house, 
Ingram said, “ Look here, Lavender. I 
mean to be frank with you. I don’t 
think it fair that you should try to drag 
Sheila Mackenzie into a flirtation. I 
knew you would fall in love with her. 
For a week or two, that does not matter 
— it harms no one. But I never thought 
of the chance of her being led into such 
a thing, for what is a mere passing 
amusement to you would be a very se- 
rious thing to her.” 

“Well ?” 

“Well? Is not that enough ? Do you 
think it fair to take advantage of this 
girl’s ignorance of the world ?” 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


45 


Lavender stopped in tlie middle of the 
path, and said, somewhat stiffly, “ This 
may be as well settled at once. You 
have talked of flirtation and all that sort 
of thing. You may regard it as you 
please, but before I leave this island I 
mean to ask Sheila Mackenzie to be my 
wife.” 

“ Why, you are mad !” cried Ingram, 
amazed to see that the young man was 
perfectly serious. 

The other shrugged his shoulders. 

“Do you mean to say,” continued In- 
gram, “that even supposing Sheila would 
consent — which is impossible — you 
would try to take away that girl from 
her father ?” 

“ Girls must leave their fathers some 
time or other,” said Lavender somewhat 
sullenly. 

“Not unless they are asked.” 

“ Oh well, they are sure to be asked, 
and they are sure to go. If their mothers 
had not done so before them, where 
would they be ? It’s all very well for 
you to talk about it and argue it out as a 
theory, but I know what the facts of the 
case are, and what any man in my posi- 
tion would do ; and I know that I am 
careless of any consequences so long as 
I can secure her for my wife.” 

“ Apparently you are — careless of any 
consequences to herself or those about 
her.” 

“ But what is your objection, Ingram ?” 
said the young man, suddenly abandon- 
ing his defiant manner : “ why should 
you object ? Do you think I would 
make a bad husband to the woman I 
married ?” 

“ I believe nothing of the sort. I be- 
lieve you would make a very good hus- 
band if you were to marry a woman 
whom you knew something about, and 
whom you had really learned to love and 
respect through your knowledge of her. 
I tell you, you know nothing about Sheila 
Mackenzie as yet. If you were to marry 
her to-morrow, you would discover in 
six months she was a woman wholly dif- 
ferent from what you had expected.” 

“Very well, then,” said Lavender with 
an air of triumph, “you can’t deny this : 
you think so much of her that the real 


woman I would discover must be better 
than the one I imagine ; and so you don’t 
expect I shall be disappointed ?” 

“ If you marry Sheila Mackenzie you 
will be disappointed — not through her 
fault, but your own. Why, a more pre- 
posterous notion never entered into a 
man’s head ! She knows nothing of 
your friends or your ways of life : you 
know nothing of hers. She would be 
miserable in London, even if you could 
persuade her father to go with her, which 
is the most unlikely thing in the world. 
Do give up this foolish idea, like a good 
fellow ; and do it before Sheila is drag- 
ged into a flirtation that may have the 
most serious consequences to her.” 

Lavender would not promise, but all 
that afternoon various resolutions and 
emotions were struggling within him for 
mastery, insomuch that Duncan could 
not understand the blundering way in 
which he whipped the pools. Mackenzie, 
Sheila and Ingram had gone off to pay 
a visit to an old crone who lived in a 
neighboring island, and in whom Ingram 
had been much interested a few years 
before ; so that Lavender had an oppor- 
tunity of practicing the art of salmon- 
fishing without interruptions. But all 
the skill he had shown in the morning 
seemed to have deserted him ; and at 
last he gave the rod to Duncan, and, 
sitting down on a top-coat flung on the 
wet heather, indolently watched the gil- 
lie’s operations. 

Should he at once fly from temptation 
and return to London ? Would it not 
be heroic to leave this old man in pos- 
session of his only daughter? Sheila 
would never know of the sacrifice, but 
what of that ? It might be for her hap- 
piness that he should go. 

But when a young man is in love, or 
fancies himself in love, with a young 
girl, it is hard for him to persuade him- 
self that anybody else can make her as 
happy as he might. Who could be so 
tender to her, so watchful over her, as 
himself? He does not reflect that her 
parents have had the experience of years 
in taking care of her, while he would be 
a mere' novice at the business. The 
pleasure with which he regards the pros- 


46 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


pect of being constantly with her he 
transfers to her, and she seems to de- 
mand it of him as a duty that he should 
confer upon her this new happiness. 

Lavender met Sheila in the evening, 
and he was yet undecided. Sometimes 
he fancied, when their eyes met unex- 
pectedly, that there was something wist- 
ful as well as friendly in her look : was 
she too dreaming of the vague possibili- 
ties of the future ? This was strange, 
too, that after each of those little chance 
reveries she seemed to be moved by a 
resolution to be more than usually affec- 
tionate toward her father, and would go 
round the table and place her hand on 
his shoulder and talk to him. Perhaps 
these things were but delusions begotten 
of his own imaginings, but the possibility 
of their being real agitated him not a 
little, and he scarcely dared to think 
what might follow. 

That evening Sheila sang, and all his 
half-formed'resolutions vanished into air. 
He sat in a corner of the curious, dimly- 
lit and old-fashioned charpber, and, lying 
back in the chair, abandoned himself to 
dreams as Sheila sang the mystic songs 
of the northern coasts. There was some- 
thing strangely suggestive of the sea in 
the room itself, and all her songs were 
of the sea. It was a smaller room than 
the large apartment in which they had 
dined, and it was filled with curiosities 
from distant shores and with the strange 
captures made by the Borva fishermen. 
Everywhere, too, were the trophies of 
Mackenzie’s skill with rod and rifle. 
Deer’s horns, seal skins, stuffed birds, 
salmon in glass cases, masses of coral, 
enormous shells and a thousand similar 
things made the little drawing-room a 
sort of grotto ; but it was a grotto within 
hearing of the sound of the sea, and 
there was no musty atmosphere in a 
room that was open all day to the cold 
winds of the Atlantic. 

With a smoking tumbler of whisky 
and water before him, the King of Borva 
sat at the table, poring over a large vol- 
ume containing plans for bridges. In- 
gram was seated at the piano, in con- 
tinual consultation with Sheila about her 
songs. Lavender, in this dusky corner, 


lay and listened, with all sorts of fancies 
crowding in upon him as Sheila sang of 
the sad and wild legends of her home. 
Was it by chance, then, he asked him- 
self, that these songs seemed so fre- 
quently to be the lamentation of a High- 
land girl for a fair-haired lover beyond 
the sea ? First of all she sang the “Wail 
of Dunevegan,” and how strangely her 
voice thrilled with the sadness of the 
song ! — 

Morn, oh mantle thy smiles of gladness ! 

Night, oh come with thy clouds of sadness ! 

Earth, thy pleasures to me seem madness ! 

Macleod, my leal love, since thou art gone. 
Dunevegan, oh ! Dunevegan, oh J 
Dunevegan ! Dunevegan ! 

It was as in a dream that he heard In- 
gram talking in a matter - of - fact way 
about the various airs, and asking the 
meaning of certain lines of Gaelic to 
compare them with the stiff and old- 
fashioned phrases of the translation. 
Surely this girl must have sat by the 
shore and waited for her absent lover, or 
how could she sing with such feeling ? — 

Say, my love, why didst thou tarry 
Far over the deep sea? 

Knew’st thou not my heart was weary, 

Heard'st thou not how I sighed for thee ! 

Did no light wind bear my wild despair 
Far over the deep sea ? 

He could imagine that beautiful face 
grown pale and wild with anguish. And 
then some day, as she went along the 
lonely island, with all the light of hope 
gone out of her eyes, and with no more 
wistful glances cast across the desolate 
sea, might not the fair-haired lover come 
at last, and leap ashore to clasp her in 
his arms, and hide the wonder-stricken 
eyes and the glad face in his bosom ? 
But Sheila sang of no such meeting. 
The girl was always alone, her lover 
gone away from her across the sea or 
into the wilds. 

Oh long on the mountain he tarries, he tarries : 

Why tarries the youth with the bright yellow hair : 
Oh long on the mountain he tarries, he tarries : 

Why seeks he the hill when his flock is not there ? 

That was what he heard her sing, until 
it seemed to him that her singing was a 
cry to be taken away from these melan- 
choly surroundings of sea and shore, 
and carried to the secure and comfort- 
able South, to be cherished and tended 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


47 


and loved. Why should this girl be left 
to live a cruel life up in these wilds, and 
to go through the world without know- 
ing anything of the happy existence that 
might have been hers ? It was well for 
harder and stronger natures to withstand 
the buffetings of wind and rain, and to 
be indifferent to the melancholy influ- 
ences of the lonely sea and the darkness 
of the northern winters ; but for her — for 
this beautiful, sensitive, tender-hearted 
girl — surely some other and gentler fate 
was in store. What he, at least, could 
do he would. He would lay his life at her 
feet ; and if she chose to go away from 
this bleak and cruel home to the sunnier 
South, would not he devote himself, as 
never a man had given himself to a 
woman before, to the constant duty of 
enriching her life with all the treasures 
of admiration and respect and love ? 

It was getting late, and presently Sheila 
retired. As she bade “Good-night” to 
him, Lavender fancied her manner was 
a little less frank toward him than usual, 
and her eyes were cast down. All the 
light of the room seemed to go with her 
when she went. 

Mackenzie mixed another tumbler of 
toddy, and began to expound to Ingram 
his views upon deer-forests and sheep- 
farms. Ingram lit a cigar, stretched out 
his legs and proceeded to listen with 
much complacent attention. As far Lav- 
ender, he sat a while, hearing vaguely 
the sounds of his companions’ voices, 
and then, saying he was a trifle tired, 
he left and went to his own room. The 
moon was then shining clearly over 
Suainabhal, and a pathway of glimmer- 
ing light lay across Loch Roag. 

He went to bed, but not to sleep. He 
had resolved to ask Sheila Mackenzie to 
be his wife, and a thousand conjectures 
as to the future were floating about his 
imagination. In the first place, would 
she listen to his prayer? She knew 
nothing of him beyond what she might 
have heard from Ingram. He had had 
no opportunity, during their friendly 
talking, of revealing to her what he 
thought of herself; but might she not 
have guessed it ? Then her father — 
what action might not this determined ! 
4 


old man take in the matter ? Would his 
love for his daughter prompt him to con- 
sider her happiness alone? All these 
things, however, were mere preliminaries, 
and the imagination of the young man 
soon overleapt them. He began to draw 
pictures of Sheila as his wife in their Lon- 
don home, among his friends, at Hastings, 
at Ascot, in Hyde Park. What would 
people say of the beautiful sea-princess 
with the proud air, the fearless eyes and 
the gentle and musical voice ? Hour 
after hour he lay and could not sleep : a 
fever of anticipation, of fear and of hope 
combined seemed to stir in his blood and 
throb in his brain. At last, in a parox- 
ysm of unrest, he rose, hastily dressed 
himself, stole down stairs, and made his 
way out into the cool air of the night. 

It could not be the coming dawn that 
revealed to him the outlines of the shore 
and the mountains and the loch ? The 
moon had already sunk in the south- 
west : not from her came that strange 
clearness by which all these objects were 
defined. Then the young man bethought 
him of what Sheila had said of the twi- 
light in these latitudes, and, turning to 
the north, he saw there a pale glow 
which looked as if it were the last faint 
traces of some former sunset. All over 
the rest of the heavens something of the 
same metallic clearness reigned, so that 
the stars were pale, and a gray hue lay 
over the sea, and over the island, the 
white bays, the black rocks and the. val- 
leys, in which lay a scarcely perceptible 
mist. 

He left the house and went vaguely 
down to the sea. The cold air, scented 
strongly with the seaweed, blew about 
him, and was sweet and fresh on the lips 
and the forehead. How strange was the 
monotonous sound of the waves, mourn- 
ful and distant, like the sound in a sea- 
shell ! That alone spoke in the awful 
stillness of the night, and it seemed to 
be telling of those things which the silent 
stars and the silent hills had looked 
down on for ages and ages. Did Sheila 
really love this terrible thing, with its 
strange voice talking in the night, or did 
she not secretly dread it and shudder at 
it when she sang of all that old sadness ? 


43 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


There was ringing in his ears the “ Wail 
of Dunevegan” as he listened for a while 
to the melancholy plashing of the waves 
all around the lonely shores ; and there 
was a cry of “Dunevegan, oh ! Duneva- 
gan, oh !” weaving itself curiously with 
those wild pictures of Sheila in London 
which were still floating before his imag- 
ination. 

He walked away around the coast, 
seeing almost nothing of the objects 
around him, but conscious of the solemn 
majesty of the mountains and the still- 
ness of the throbbing stars. He could 
have called aloud, “ Sheila ! Sheila !” but 
that all the place seemed associated with 
her presence ; and might he not turn 
suddenly to find her figure standing by 
him, with her face grown wild and pale 
as it was in the ballad, and a piteous 
and awful look in her eyes ? Did the 
figure accuse him ? He scarcely dared 
look round, lest there should be a phan- 
tom Sheila appealing to him for compas- 
sion, and complaining against him with 
her speechless eyes for a wrong that he 
could not understand. He fled from her, 
but he knew she was there ; and all the 
love in his heart -went out to her as if 
beseeching her to go away and forsake 
him, and forgive him the injury of which 
she seemed to accuse him. What wrong 
had he done her that he should be haunt- 
ed by this spectre, that did not threaten, 
but only looked piteously toward him 
with eyes full of entreaty and pain ? 

He left the shore, and blindly made 
his way up to the pasture-land above, 
careless whither he went. He knew not 
how long he had been away from the 
house, but here was a small fresh-water 
lake set round about with rushes, and 
far over there in the east lay a glimmer 
of the channels between Borva and 
Lewis. But soon there was another light 
in the east, high over the low mists that 
lay along the land. A pale blue-gray 
arose in the cloudless sky, and the stars 
went out one by one. The mists were 
seen to lie in thicker folds along the 
desolate valleys. Then a faintly yellow 
whiteness stole up into the sky, and- 
broadened and widened, and behold! 
the little moorland loch caught a reflec- 


tion of the glare, and there was a streak 
of crimson here and there on the dark- 
blue surface of the water. Loch Roag 
began to brighten. Suainabhal was 
touched with rose - red on its eastern 
slopes. The Atlantic seemed to rise out 
of its purple sleep with the new light of 
a new dawn ; and then there was a chir- 
ruping of birds over the heath, and the 
first shafts of the sunlight ran along the 
surface of the sea, and lit up the white 
wavelets that were breaking on the beach. 
The new day struck upon him with a 
strange sense of wonder. Where was 
he ? Whither had gone the wild visions 
of the night, the feverish dread, the hor- 
rible forebodings ? The strong mental 
emotion that had driven him out now 
produced its natural reaction : he looked 
about in a dazed fashion at the revela- 
tion of light around him, and felt him- 
self trembling with weakness. Slowly, 
blindly and hopelessly he set to walk 
back across the island, with the sunlight 
of the fresh morning calling into life ten 
thousand audible things of the moorland 
around him. 

And who was this who stood at the 
porch of the house in the clear sunshine ? 
Not the pale and ghastly creature who 
had haunted him during those wild 
hours, but Sheila herself, singing some 
snatches of a song, and engaged in wa- 
tering the two bushes of sweetbrier at 
the gate. How bright and roseate and 
happy she looked, with the fine color of 
her face lit up by the fresh sunlight, and 
the brisk breeze from the sea stirring: 
now and again the loose masses of her 
hair ! Haggard and faint as he was, he 
would have startled her if he had gone 
up to her then. He dared not approach 
her. He waited until she had gone 
round to the gable of the house to water 
the plants there, and then he stole into 
the house and up stairs, and threw him- 
self upon the bed. And outside he still 
heard Sheila singing lightly to herself 
as she went about her ordinary duties, 
little thinking in how strange and wild a 
drama her wraith had that night taken 
part. 


PART III 


CHAPTER VI. 

AT BARVAS BRIDGE. 

V ERY soon, indeed, Ingram began 
to see that his friend had spoken 
to him quite frankly, and that he was 
really bent on asking Sheila to become 
his wife. Ingram contemplated this 
prospect with some dismay, and with 
some vague consciousness that he was 
himself responsible for what he could 
not help regarding as a disaster. He 
had half expected that Frank Lavender 
would, in his ordinary fashion, fall in 
love with Sheila — for about a fortnight. 
He had joked him about it even before 
they came within sight of Sheila’s home. 
He had listened with a grim humor to 
Lavender’s outbursts of admiration, and 
only asked himself how many times he 
had heard the same phrases before. But 
now things were looking more serious, 
for the young man had thrown himself 
into the prosecution of his new project 
with all the generous poetic enthusiasm 
of a highly impulsive nature. Ingram 
saw that everything a young man could 
do to win the heart of a young girl Lav- 
ender would do ; and Nature had dow- 
ered him richly with various means of 
fascination. Most dangerous of all of 
these was a gift of sincerity that deceived 
himself. He could assume an opinion 
or express an emotion at will, with such 
a genuine fervor that he himself forgot 
how recently he had acquired it, and 
was able to convince his companion for 
the moment that it was a revelation of 
his inmost soul. It was this charm of 
impetuous sincerity which had fascinated 
Ingram himself years before, and made 
him cultivate the acquaintance of a 
young man whom he at first regarded 
as a somewhat facile, talkative and his- 
trionic person. Ingram perceived, for 
example, that young Lavender had so 
little regard for public affairs that he 
would have been quite content to see 


our Indian empire go for the sake of 
eliciting a sarcasm from Lord Westbury ; 
but at the same time, if you had appeal- 
ed to his nobler instincts, and placed 
before him the condition of a certain 
populace suffering from starvation, he 
would have done all in his power to aid 
them : he would have written letters to 
the newspapers, would have headed 
subscriptions, and would have ended 
by believing that he had been the con- 
stant friend of the people of India 
throughout his life, and was bound to 
stick to them to the end of it. 

As often as not he borrowed his fancies 
and opinions from Edward Ingram him- 
self, who was amused and gratified at 
the same time to find his humdrum no- 
tions receive a dozen new lights and 
colors when transferred to the warmer 
atmosphere of his friend’s imagination. 
Ingram would even consent to receive 
from his younger companion advice, im- 
petuously urged and richly illustrated, 
which he had himself offered in simpler 
terms months before. At this very mo- 
ment he could see that much of Laven- 
der’s romantic conceptions of Sheila’s 
character was only an exaggeration of 
some passing hints he, Ingram, had 
dropped as the Clansman was steaming 
into Stornoway. But then they were 
ever so much more beautiful. Ingram 
held to his conviction that he himself 
was a distinctly commonplace person. 
He had grown reconciled to the ordi- 
nary grooves of life. But young Laven- 
der was not commonplace : he fancied 
he could see in him an occasional flash 
of something that looked like genius ; 
and many and many a time, in regard- 
ing the brilliant and facile powers, the 
generous impulses and the occasional 
ambitions of his companion, he wonder- 
ed whether these would ever lead to any- 
thing in the way of production, or even 
of consolidation of character, or whether 


5o 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


they would merely remain the passing 
sensations of an indifferent idler. Some- 
times, indeed, he devoutly wished that 
Lavender had been born a stonemason. 

But all these pleasant and graceful 
qualities, which had made the young 
man an agreeable companion, were a 
serious danger now ; for was it not but 
too probable that Sheila, accustomed to 
the rude and homely ways of the isl- 
anders, would be attracted and pleased 
and fascinated by one who had about 
him so much of a soft and southern 
brightness with which she was wholly 
unfamiliar? This open-hearted frank- 
ness of his placed all his best qualities 
in the sunshine, as it were : she could 
not fail to see the singular modesty and 
courtesy of his bearing toward women, 
his gentle manners, his light-hearted- 
ness, his passionate admiration of the 
self-sacrifice of*others, and his sympathy 
with their sufferings. Ingram would not 
have minded much if Lavender alone 
had been concerned in the dilemma now 
growing imminent: he would have left 
him to flounder out of it as he had got 
out of previous ones. But he had been 
surprised and pained, and even fright- 
ened, to detect in Sheila’s manner some 
faint indications — so faint that he was 
doubtful what construction to put on 
them — of a special interest in the young 
stranger whom he had brought with him 
to Borva. 

What could he do in the matter, sup- 
posing his suspicions were correct ? Cau- 
tion Sheila? — it would be an insult. 
Warn Mackenzie? — the King of Borva 
would fly into a passion with everybody 
concerned, and bring endless humilia- 
tion on his daughter, who had probably 
never dreamed of regarding Lavender 
except as a chance acquaintance. In- 
sist upon Lavender going south at once ? 
— that would merely goad the young man 
into obstinacy. Ingram found himself 
in a grievous difficulty, afraid to say how 
much of it was of his own creation. He 
had no selfish sentiments of his own to 
consult: if it were to become evident 
that the happiness of Sheila and of his 
friend depended on their marrying each 
other, he was ready to forward such a 


project with all the influence at his com- 
mand. But there were a hundred rea- 
sons why he should dread such a mar- 
riage. He had already mentioned sev- 
eral of them to Lavender in trying to 
dissuade the young man from his pur- 
pose. A few days had passed since 
then, and it was clear that Lavender 
had abandoned all notion of fulfilling 
those resolutions he had vaguely form- 
ed. But the more Ingram thought over 
the matter, and the further he recalled 
all the ancient proverbs and stories 
about the fate of intermeddlers, the more 
evident it became to him that he could 
take no immediate action in the affair. 
He would trust to the chapter of acci- 
dents to save Sheila from what he con- 
sidered a disastrous fate. Perhaps Lav- 
ender would repent. Perhaps Macken- 
zie, continually on the watch for small 
secrets, would discover something, and 
bid his daughter stay in Borva while his 
guests proceeded on their tour through 
Lewis. In any case, it was not at all 
certain that Lavender would be success- 
ful in his suit. Was the heart of a proud- 
spirited, intelligent and busily-occupied 
girl to be won in a matter of three weeks 
or a month ? Lavender would go south, 
and no more would be heard of it. 

This tour round the island of Lewis, 
however, was not likely to favor much 
any such easy escape from the difficulty. 
On a certain morning the larger of Mr. 
Mackenzie’s boats carried the holiday 
party away from Borva; and even at 
this early stage, as they sat at the stern 
of the heavy craft, Lavender had arro- 
gated to himself the exclusive right of 
waiting upon Sheila. He had consti- 
tuted himself her companion in all their 
excursions about Borva which they had 
undertaken, and now, on this longer 
journey, they were to be once more 
thrown together. It did seem a little 
hard that Ingram should be relegated 
to Mackenzie and his theories of govern- 
ment; but did he not profess to prefer 
that ? Like most men who have got be- 
yond five-and-thirty, he was rather proud 
of considering himself an observer of life. 
He stood aside as a spectator, and let 
other people, engaged in all manner of 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


51 


eager pursuits, pass before him for review. 
Toward young folks, indeed, he assumed 
a good-naturedly paternal air, as if they 
were but as shy-faced children to be 
humored. Were not their love-affairs a 
pretty spectacle ? As for himself, he was 
far beyond all that. The illusions of 
love-making, the devotion and ambition 
and dreams of courtship, were no longer 
possible to him, but did they not consti- 
tute on the whole a beautiful and charm- 
ing study, that had about it at times some 
little touches of pathos ? At odd mo- 
ments, when he saw Sheila and Laven- 
der walking together in the evening, he 
was himself half inclined to wish that 
something might come of the young 
man’s determination. It would be so 
pleasant to play the part of a friendly 
counselor, to humor the follies of the 
young folks, to make jokes at their ex- 
pense, and then, in the midst of their 
embarrassment and resentment, to go 
forward and pet them a little, and assure 
them of a real and earnest sympathy. 

"Your time is to come,” Lavender said 
to him suddenly after he had been ex- 
hibiting some of his paternal forbear- 
ance and consideration : "you will get a 
dreadful twist some day, my boy. You 
have been doing nothing but dreaming 
about women, but some day or other 
you will wake up to find yourself cap- 
tured and fascinated beyond anything 
you have ever seen in other people, and 
then you will discover what a desperately 
real thing it is.” 

Ingram had a misty impression that 
ne had heard something like this before. 
Llad he not given Lavender some warn- 
ing of the same kind ? But he was so 
much accustomed to hear those vague 
repetitions of his own remarks, and was, 
on the whole, so well pleased to think 
that his commonplace notions should 
take root and flourish in this goodly soil, 
that he never thought of asking Laven- 
der to quote his authority for those pro- 
found observations on men and things. 

"Now, Miss Mackenzie,” said the 
young man as the big boat was drawing 
near to Callernish, " what is to be our 
first sketch in Lewis ?” 

"The Callernish Stones, of course,” 


said Mackenzie himself: "it iss more 
than one hass come to the Lewis to see 
the Callernish Stones.” 

Lavender had promised to the King 
of Borva a series of water-color draw- 
ings of Lewis, and Sheila was to choose 
the subjects from day to day. Macken- 
zie was gratified by this proposal, and 
accepted it with much magnanimity ; but 
Sheila knew that before the offer was 
made Lavender had come to her and 
asked her if she cared about sketches, 
and whether he might be allowed to take 
a few on this journey and present them 
to her. She was very grateful, but sug- 
gested that it might please her papa if 
they were given to him. Would she 
superintend them, then, and choose the 
topics for illustration ? Yes, she would 
do that ; and so the young man was 
furnished with a roving commission. 

He brought her a little sepia sketch 
of Borvabost, its huts, its bay, and its 
upturned boats on the beach. Sheila’s 
expressions of praise, the admiration and 
pleasure that shone in her eyes, would 
have turned any young man’s head. 
But her papa looked at the picture with 
a critical eye, and remarked, " Oh yes, 
it is ferry good, but it is not the color of 
Loch Roag at all. It is the color of a 
river when there is a flood of rain. I 
have neffer at all seen Loch Roag a 
brown color — neffer at all.” 

It was clear, then, that the subsequent 
sketches could not be taken in sepia, 
and so Lavender proposed to make a 
series of pencil-drawings, which could 
be washed in with color afterward. 
There was one subject, indeed, which 
since his arrival in Lewis he had tried 
to fix on paper by every conceivable 
means in his power, and that was Sheila 
herself. He had spoiled innumerable 
sheets of paper in trying to get some 
likeness of her which would satisfy him- 
self, but all his usual skill seemed some- 
how to have gone from him. He could 
not understand it. In ordinary circum- 
stances he could have traced in a dozen 
lines a portrait that would at least have 
shown a superficial likeness : he could 
have multiplied portraits by the dozen 
of old Mackenzie or Ingram or Duncan, 


52 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


but here he seemed to fail utterly. He 
invited no criticism, certainly. These ef- 
forts were made in his own room, and 
he asked no one’s opinion as to the like- 
ness. He could, indeed, certify to him- 
self that the drawing of the features was 
correct enough. There was the sweet 
and placid forehead with its low masses 
of dark hair ; there the short upper lip, 
the finely-carved mouth, the beautifully- 
rounded chin and throat ; and there the 
frank, clear, proud eyes, with their long 
lashes and highly - curved eyebrows. 
Sometimes, too, a touch of color added 
warmth to the complexion, put a glim- 
mer of the blue sea beneath the long 
black eyelashes, and drew a thread of 
scarlet round the white neck. But was 
this Sheila ? Could he take this sheet 
of paper to his friends in London and 
say, Here is the magical princess whom 
I hope to bring to you from the North, 
with all the glamour of the sea around 
her? He felt instinctively that there 
would be an awkward pause. The peo- 
ple would praise the handsome, frank, 
courageous head, and look upon the bit 
of red ribbon round the neck as an 
effective artistic touch. They would 
hand him back the paper with a com- 
pliment, and he would find himself in 
an agony of unrest because they had 
misunderstood the portrait, and seen 
nothing of the wonder that encompassed 
this Highland girl as if with a garment 
of mystery and dreams. 

So he tore up portrait after portrait 
— more than one of which would have 
startled Ingram by its truth — and then, 
to prove to himself that he was not 
growing mad, he resolved to try a por- 
trait of some other person. He drew a 
head of old Mackenzie in chalk, and was 
amazed at the rapidity and facility with 
which he executed the task. Then there 
could be no doubt as to the success of 
the likeness nor as to the effect of the 
picture. The King of Borva, with his 
heavy eyebrows, his aquiline nose, his 
keen gray eyes and flowing beard, offer- 
ed a fine subject ; and there was some- 
thing really royal and massive and noble 
in the head that Lavender, well satisfied 
with his work, took down stairs one 


evening. Sheila was alone in the draw- 
ing-room, turning over some music. 

“Miss Mackenzie,” he said rather 
kindly, “would you look at this ?” 

Sheila turned round, and the sudden 
light of pleasure that leapt to her face 
was all the praise and all the assurance 
he wanted.. But he had more than that. 
The girl was grateful to him beyond all 
the words she could utter; and when 
he asked her if she would accept the 
picture, she thanked him by taking his 
hand for a moment, and then she left 
the room to call in Ingram and her fa- 
ther. All the evening there was a sin- 
gular look of happiness on her face. 
When she met Lavender’s eyes with 
hers there was a frank and friendly look 
of gratitude ready to reward him. When 
had he earned so much before by a 
simple sketch ? Many and many a por- 
trait, carefully executed and elaborately 
framed, had he presented to his lady 
friends in London, to receive from them 
a pretty note and a few words of thanks 
when next he called. Here with a rough 
chalk sketch he had awakened an 
amount of gratitude that almost sur- 
prised him in the most beautiful and 
tender soul in the world ; and had not 
this princess among women taken his 
hand for a moment as a childlike way 
of expressing her thanks, while her eyes 
spoke more than her lips ? And the 
more he looked at those eyes, the more 
he grew to despair of ever being able to 
put down the magic of them in lines and 
colors. 

At length Duncan got the boat into 
the small creek at Callernish, and the 
party got out on the shore. As they 
were going up the steep path leading to 
the plain above a young girl met them, 
who looked at them in rather a strange 
way. She had a fair, pretty, wondering 
face, with singularly high eyebrows and 
clear, light-blue eyes. 

“How are you, Eily?” said Macken- 
zie as he passed on with Ingram. 

But Sheila, on making the same in- 
quiry, shook hands with the girl, who 
smiled in a confidential way, and, com- 
ing quite close, nodded and pointed 
down to the water’s edge. 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


53 


“Have you seen them to-day, Eily ?” 
said Sheila, still holding the girl by the 
hands, and looking at the fair, pretty, 
strange face. 

“ It wass sa day before yesterday,” she 
answered in a whisper, while a pleased 
smile appeared on her face, “and sey 
will be here sa night.” 

“ Good-bye, Eily : take care you don’t 
stay out at night and catch cold* you 
know,” said Sheila; and then, with an- 
other little nod and a smile, the young 
girl went down the path. 

“ It is Eily-of-the-Ghosts, as they call 
her,” said Sheila to Lavender as they 
went on : “ the poor thing fancies she 
sees little people about the rocks, and 
watches for them. But she is very good 
and quiet, and she is not afraid of them, 
and she does no harm to any one. She 
does not belong to the Lewis — I think 
she is from Islay — but she sometimes 
comes to pay us a visit at Borva, and 
my papa is very kind to her.” 

“ Mr. Ingram does not appear to know 
her : I thought he was acquainted with 
every one in the island,” said Lavender. 

“ She was not here when he has been 
in the Lewis before,” said Sheila; “but 
Eily does not like to speak to strangers, 
and I do not think you could get her to 
speak to you if you tried.” 

Lavender had paid but little attention 
to the “false men” of Callernish when 
first he saw them, but now he approach- 
ed the long lines of big stones up on this 
lonely plateau with a new interest; for 
Sheila had talked to him about them 
many a time in Borva, and had asked 
his opinion about their origin and their 
age. Was the central circle of stones an 
altar, with the other series marking the 
approaches to it ? Or was it the grave 
of some great chieftain, with the remain- 
ing stones indicating the graves of his 
relations and friends? Or was it the 
commemoration of some battle in olden 
times, or the record of astronomical or 
geometrical discoveries, or a temple 
once devoted to serpent - worship, or 
what ? Lavender, who knew absolutely 
nothing at all about the matter, was 
probably as well qualified as anybody 
else to answer these questions, but he 


forbore. The interest, however, that 
Sheila showed in such things he very 
rapidly acquired. When he came to see 
the rows of stones a second time he was 
much impressed by their position on this 
bit of hill overlooking the sea. He sat 
down on his camp-stool with the deter- 
mination that, although he could not sat- 
isfy Sheila’s wistful questions, he would 
present her with some little sketch of 
these monuments and their surroundings 
which might catch up something of the 
mysterious loneliness'of the scene. 

He would not, of course, have the pic- 
ture as it then presented itself. The sun 
was glowing on the grass around him, 
and lighting up the tall gray pillars of 
stone with a cheerful radiance. Over 
there the waters of Loch Roag were 
bright and blue, and beyond the lake 
the undulations of moorland were green 
and beautiful, and the mountains in the 
south grown pale as silver in the heat. 
Here was a pretty young lady, in a rough 
blue traveling-dress and a hat and feath- 
er, who was engaged in picking up wild- 
flowers from the warm heath. There 
was a gentleman from the office of the 
Board of Trade, who was sitting on the 
grass, nursing his knees and whistling. 
From time to time the chief figure in the 
foreground was an elderly gentleman, 
who evidently expected that he was go- 
ing to be put into the picture, and who 
was occasionally dropping a cautious 
hint that he did not always wear this 
rough-and-ready sailor’s costume. Mac- 
kenzie was also most anxious to point 
out to the artist the names of the hills 
and districts lying to the south of Loch 
Roag, apparently with the hope that the 
sketch would have a certain topograph- 
ical interest for future visitors. 

No : Lavender was content at that 
moment to take down the outlines of the 
great stones and the configuration of 
lake and hill beyond, but by and by he 
would give another sort of atmosphere 
to this wild scene. He would have rain 
and darkness spread over the island, 
with the low hills in the south grown 
desolate and remote, and the waters of 
the sea covered with gloom. No human 
figure should be visible on this remote 


54 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


plain, where these strange memorials had 
stood for centuries, exposed to western 
gales and the stillness of the winter nights 
and the awful silence of the stars. Would 
not Sheila, at least, understand the bleak- 
ness and desolation of the picture ? Of 
course her father would like to have ev- 
erything blue and green. He seemed a 
little disappointed when it was clear that 
no distant glimpse of Borva could be in- 
troduced into the sketch. But Sheila’s 
imagination would be captured by this 
sombre picture, ai#d perhaps by and by 
in some other land, amid fairer scenes 
and in a more generous climate, she 
might be less inclined to hunger for the 
dark and melancholy North when she 
looked on this record of its gloom and 
its sadness. 

“ Iss he going to put any people in the 
pictures?” said Mackenzie in a confi- 
dential whisper to Ingram. 

Ingram got up from the grass, and 
said with a yawn, I don’t know. If 
he does, it will be afterward. Suppose 
we go along to the wagonette and see if 
Duncan has brought everything up from 
the boat ?” 

The old man seemed rather unwilling 
to be cut out of this particular sketch, 
but he went nevertheless ; and Sheila, 
seeing the young man left alone, and 
thinking that not quite fair, went over to 
him and asked if she might be permit- 
ted to see as much as he had done. 

Lavender shut up the book. 

“ No,” he said with a laugh, “ you shall 
see it to-night. I have sufficient memo- 
randa to work something out of by and 
by. Shall we have another look at the 
circle up there ?” 

He folded up and shouldered his camp- 
stool, and they walked up to the point at 
which the lines of the “mourners ” con- 
verged. Perhaps he was moved by a 
great antiquarian curiosity : at all events, 
he showed a singular interest in the monu- 
ments, and talked to his companion about 
all the possible theories connected with 
such stones in a fashion that charmed 
her greatly. She was easily persuaded 
that the Callernish “ Fir-Bhreige ” were 
the most interesting relics in the world. 
He had seen Stonehenge, but Stonehenge 


was too scattered to be impressive. There 
was more mystery about the means by 
which the inhabitants of a small island 
could have hewn and carved and erect- 
ed these blocks : there was, moreover, 
the mystery about the vanished popula- 
tion itself. Yes, he had been to Carnac 
also. He had driven down from Auray 
in a rumbling old trap, his coachman 
being unable to talk French. He had 
seen the half-cultivated plain on which 
there were rows and rows of small stones, 
scarcely to be distinguished from the 
stone walls of the adjoining farms. 
What was there impressive about such 
a sight when you went into a house and 
paid a franc to be shown the gold orna- 
ments picked up about the place ? Here, 
however, was a perfect series of those 
strange memorials, with the long lanes 
leading up to a circle, and the tallest of 
all the stones placed on the western side 
of the circle, perhaps as the headstone 
of the buried chief. Look at the posi- 
tion, too — the silent hill, the waters of 
the sea-loch around it, and beyond that 
the desolation of miles of untenanted 
moorland. Sheila looked pleased that 
her companion, after coming so far, 
should have found something worth 
looking at in the Lewis. 

“Does it not seem strange,” he said 
suddenly, “to think of young folks of 
the present day picking up wild-flowers 
from among these old stones ?” He was 
looking at a tiny bouquet which she had 
gathered. 

“Will you take. them ?” she said, quite 
simply and naturally offering him the 
flowers. “ They may remind you some 
time of Callernish.” 

He took the flowers, and regarded 
them for a moment in silence, and then 
he said gently, “ I do not think I shall 
want these to remind me of Callernish. 
I shall never forget our being here.” 

At this moment, perhaps fortunately, 
Duncan appeared, and came along to- 
ward the young people with a basket in 
his hand. 

“It wass Mr. Mackenzie will ask if ye 
will tek a glass o’ whisky, sir, and a bit 
o’ bread and cheese. And he wass say- 
in’ there wass no hurry at all, and he 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


55 


will wait for you for two hours or half an 
hour whatever.” 

“All right, Duncan: go back and tell 
him I have finished, and we shall be 
there directly. No, thank you, don’t 
take out the whisky — unless, Miss Mac- 
kenzie,” added the young man with a 
smile, “Duncan can persuade you.” 

Duncan looked with amazement at 
the man who dared to joke about Miss 
Sheila taking whisky, and without wait- 
ing for any further commands indignant- 
ly shut the lid of the basket and walked 
off. 

“ I wonder, Miss Mackenzie,” said 
Lavender as they went along the path 
and down the hill — ■“ I wonder what you 
would say if I happened to call you 
Sheila by mistake ?” 

“I should be glad if you did that. 
Every one calls me Sheila,” said the 
girl quietly enough. 

“You would not be vexed?” he said, 
regarding her with a little surprise. 

“No: why should I be vexed?” she 
answered ; and she happened to look up, 
and he saw what a clear light of sincer- 
ity there was shining in her eyes. 

“May I then call you Sheila ?” 

“Yes.” 

“ But — but — ” he said, with a timidity 
and embarrassment of which she showed 
no trace whatever — “but people might 
think it strange, you know; and yet I 
should greatly like to call you Sheila ; 
only, not before other people perhaps.” 

“But why not?” she said with her 
eyebrows just raised a little. “Why 
should you wish to call me Sheila at one 
time and not at the other ? It is no dif- 
ference whatever, and every one calls me 
Sheila.” 

Lavender was a little disappointed. 
He had hoped, when she consented in 
so friendly a manner to his calling her 
by any name he chose, that he could 
have established this little arrangement, 
which would have had about it some- 
thing of the nature of a personal con- 
fidence. Sheila would evidently have 
none of that. Was it that she was really 
so simple and frank in her ways that 
she did not understand why there should 
be such a difference, and what it might 


imply, or was she well aware of every- 
thing he had been wishing, and able to 
assume this air of simplicity and igno- 
rance with a perfect grace ? Ingram, he 
reflected, would have said at once that 
to suspect Sheila of such duplicity was to 
insult her ; but then Ingram was per- 
haps himself a trifle' too easily imposed 
on, and he had notions about women, 
despite all his philosophical reading and 
such like, that a little more mingling in 
society might have caused him to alter. 
Frank Lavender confessed to himself 
that Sheila was either a miracle of ingen- 
uousness or a thorough mistress of the 
art of assuming it. On the one hand, 
he considered it almost impossible for 
a woman to be so disingenuous ; on the 
other hand, how could this girl have 
taught herself, in the solitude of a sav- 
age island, a species of histrionicism 
which women in London circles strove 
for years to acquire, and rarely acquired 
in any perfection ? At all events, he said 
to himself, while he reserved his opinion 
on this point, he was not going to call 
Sheila Sheila before folks who would 
know what that meant. Mr. Mackenzie 
was evidently a most irascible old gen- 
tleman. Goodness only knew what sort 
of law prevailed in these wild parts ; and 
to be seized at midnight by a couple of 
brawny fishermen, to be carried down 
to a projecting ledge of rock — ! Had 
not Ingram already hinted that Macken- 
zie would straightway throw into Loch 
Roag the man who should offer to carry 
away Sheila from him ? 

But how could these doubts of Sheila’s 
sincerity last? He sat opposite her in 
the wagonette, and the perfect truth of 
her face, of her frank eyes and of her 
ready smile met him at every moment, 
whether he talked to her or to Ingram, 
or listened to old Mackenzie, who turned 
from time to time from the driving of 
the horses to inform the stranger of what 
he saw around him. It was the most 
brilliant of mornings. The sun burned 
on the white road, on the green moor- 
land, on the gray-lichened rocks with 
their crimson patches of heather. As 
they drove by the curious convolutions 
of this rugged - coast, the sea that lay 


56 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


beyond these recurring bays and points 
was of a windy green, with here and 
there a streak of white, and the fresh 
breeze blowing across to them tempered 
the fierce heat of the sun. How cool, 
too, were those little fresh-water lakes 
they passed, the clear blue and white of 
them stirred into wavelets that moved 
the reeds and left air-bubbles about the 
half-submerged stones ! Were not those 
wild-geese over there, flapping in the 
water with their huge wings and taking 
no notice of the passing strangers ? 
Lavender had never seen this lonely 
coast in times of gloom, with those little 
lakes become sombre pools, and the 
outline of the rocks beyond lost in the 
driving mist of the sea and the rain. It 
was altogether a bright and beautiful 
world he had got into, and there was in 
it but one woman, beautiful beyond his 
dreams. To doubt her was to doubt all 
women. When he looked, at her he for- 
got the caution and distrust and sardonic 
self-complacency his southern training 
had given him. He believed, and the 
world seemed to be filled with a new 
light. . 

“That is Loch-na-Muirne,” Macken- 
zie was saying, “and it iss the Loch of 
the Mill ; and over there that is Loch-a- 
Bhaile, and that iss the Loch of the 
Town ; but where iss the loch and the 
town now ? It wass many hundreds of 
years before there will be numbers of 
people in this place ; and you will come 
to Dun Charlobhaidh, which is a great 
castle, by and by. And what wass it 
will drive away the people, and leave 
the land to the moss, but that there wass 
no one to look after them ? ‘ When the 
natives will leave Islay, farewell to the 
peace of Scotland.’ That iss a good 
proverb. And if they have no one to 
mind them, they will go away altogether. 
And there is no people more obedient 
than the people of the Highlands — not 
anywhere ; for you know that we say, ‘ Is 
it the truth, as if you were speaking be- 
fore kings ?’ And now there is the castle, 
and there wass many people living here 
when they could build that.” 

It was, in truth, one of those circular 
forts the date of which has given rise 


to endless conjecture and discussion. 
Perched up on a hill, it overlooked a 
number of deep and narrow valleys that 
ran landward, while the other side of 
the hill sloped down to the sea-shore. 
It was a striking object, this tumbling 
mass of dark stones standing high over 
the green hollows and over the light 
plain of the sea. Was there not here 
material for another sketch for Sheila ? 
While Lavender had gone away over 
the heights and hollows to choose his 
point of view a rough and ready luncheon 
had been spread out in the wagonette, 
and when he returned, perspiring and 
considerably blown, he found old Mac- 
kenzie measuring out equal portions of 
peat-water and whisky, Duncan flick- 
ing the enormous “clegs” from off the 
horses’ necks, Ingram trying to persuade 
Sheila to have some sherry out of a flask 
he carried, and everybody in very good 
spirits over such an exciting event as a 
roadside luncheon on a summer fore- 
noon. 

The King of Borva had by this time 
become excellent friends with the young 
stranger who had ventured into his do- 
minions. When the old gentleman had 
sufficiently impressed on everybody that 
he had observed all necessary precau- 
tion in studying the character and in- 
quiring into the antecedents of Lavender, 
he could not help confessing to a sense 
of lightness and vivacity that the young 
man seemed to bring with him and shed 
around him. Nor was this matter of the 
sketches the only thing that had particu- 
larly recommended Lavender to the old 
man. Mackenzie had a most distinct 
dislike to Gaelic songs. He could not 
bear the monotonous melancholy of 
them. When Sheila, sitting by herself, 
would sing these strange old ballads of 
an evening, he would suddenly enter the 
room, probably find her eyes filled with 
tears, and then he would in his inmost 
heart devote the whole of Gaelic min- 
strelsy and all its authors to the infernal 
gods. Why should people be for ever 
saddening themselves with the stories 
of other folks’ misfortunes ? It was bad 
enough for those poor people, but they 
had borne their sorrows and died, and 


A PRINCESS OF THULE, 


57 


were at peace. Surely it was better that 
we should have songs about ourselves 
— drinking or fighting, if you like — to 
keep up the spirits, to lighten the serious 
cares of life, and drown for a while the 
responsibility of looking after a whole 
population of poor, half-ignorant, un- 
philosophical creatures. 

“Look, now,” he would say, speaking 
of his own tongue, “look at this teffle of 
a language ! It has no present tense to 
its verbs : the people they are always 
looking forward to a melancholy future 
or looking back to a melancholy past. 
In the name of Kott, hef we not got our- 
selves to live ? This day we live in is 
better than any day that wass before or 
iss to come, bekass it is here and we are 
alive. And I will hef no more of these 
songs about crying, and crying, and 
crying !” 

Now Sheila and Lavender, in their 
mutual musical confidences, had at an 
early period discovered that each of 
them knew something of the older Eng- 
lish duets, and forthwith they tried a 
few of them, to Mackenzie’s extreme 
delight. Here, at last, was a sort of 
mfisic he could understand — none of 
your moanings of widows and cries of 
luckless girls to the sea, but good com- 
mon-sense songs, in which the lads 
kissed the lasses with a will, and had a 
good drink afterward, and a dance on 
the green on their homeward way. 
There was fun in those happy May- 
fields, and good health and briskness in 
the ale-house choruses, and throughout 
them all a prevailing cheerfulness and 
contentment with the conditions of life 
certain to recommend itself to the con- 
templative mind. Mackenzie never tired 
of hearing those simple ditties. He grew 
confidential with the young man, and 
told him that those fine, common-sense 
songs recalled pleasant scenes to him. 
He himself knew something of English 
village life. When he had been up to 
see the Great Exhibition he had gone to 
visit a friend living in Brighton, and he 
had surveyed the country with an ob- 
servant eye. He had remarked several 
village-greens, with the May-poles stand- 
ing here and there in front of the cot- 


tages, emblazoned with beautiful ban- 
ners. He had, it is true, fancied that 
the May-pole should be in the centre of 
the green ; but the manner in which the 
waves of population swept here and 
there, swallowing up open spaces and so 
forth, would account to a philosophical 
person for the fact that the May-poles 
were now close to the village-shops. 

“Drink to me only with thine eyes,” 
hummed the King of Borva to himself 
as he sent the two little horses along the 
coast-road on this warm summer day. 
He had heard the song for the first time 
on the previous evening. He had no 
voice to speak of; he had missed the 
air, and these were all the words he re- 
membered ; but it was a notable com- 
pliment all the same to the young man 
who had brought these pleasant tunes 
to the island. And so they drove on 
through the keen salt air, with the sea 
shining beside them and the sky shining 
over them ; and in the afternoon they 
arrived at the small, remote and solitary 
inn of Barvas, placed near the conflu- 
ence of several rivers that flow through 
Loch Barvas (or Barabhas) to the sea. 
Here they proposed to stop the night, so 
that Lavender, when his room had been 
assigned to him, begged to be left alone 
for an hour or two, that he might throw 
a little color into his sketch of Caller- 
nish. What was there to see at Barvas ? 
Why, nothing but the channels of the 
brown streams, some pasture-land and 
a few huts, then the unfrequented lake, 
and beyond that some ridges of white 
sand standing over the shingly beach of 
the sea. He would join them at din- 
ner. Mackenzie protested in a mild 
way : he really wanted to see how the 
island was to. be illustrated by the stran- 
ger. There was a greater protest, mingled 
with compassion and regret, in Sheila’s 
eyes ; but the young man was firm. So 
they let him have his way, and gave 
him full possession of the common sit- 
ting-room, while they set off to visit the 
school and the Free-Church manse and 
what not in the neighborhood. 

Mackenzie had ordered dinner at 
eight, to show that he was familiar with 
the ways of civilized life ; and when they 


58 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


returned at that hour Lavender had two 
sketches finished. 

“Yes, they are very good,” said In- 
gram, who was seldom enthusiastic 
about his friend’s work. 

But old Mackenzie was so vastly 
pleased with the picture, which repre- 
sented his native place in the brightest 
of sunshine and colors, that he forgot to 
assume a critical air. He said nothing 
against the rainy and desolate version 
of the scene that had been given to 
Sheila : it was good enough to please the 
child. But here was something brilliant, 
effective, cheerful ; and he alarmed Lav- 
ender not a little by proposing to get one 
of the natives to carry this treasure, then 
and there, back to Borvabost. Both 
sketches were ultimately returned to his 
book, and then Sheila helped him to re- 
move his artistic apparatus from the 
table on which their plain and homely 
meal was to be placed. As she was 
about to follow her father and Ingram, 
who had left the room, she paused for a 
moment and said to Lavender, with a 
look of frank gratitude in her eyes, “ It 
is very good of you to have pleased my 
papa so much. I know when he is 
pleased, though he does not speak of it ; 
and it is not often he will be so much 
pleased.” 

“And you, Sheila?” said the young 
man, unconscious of the familiarity he 
was using, and only remembering that 
she had scarcely thanked him for the 
other sketch. 

“ Well, there is nothing that will please 
me so much as to see him pleased,” she 
said with a smile. 

He was about to open the door for 
her, but he kept his hand on the handle, 
and said, earnestly enough, “ But that is 
such a small matter — an hour’s work. 
If you only knew how gladly I would 
live all my life here if only I could do 
you some greater service — ” 

She looked a little surprised, and then 
for one brief second reflected. English 
was not wholly familiar to her : perhaps 
she had failed to catch what he really 
meant. But at all events she said 
gravely and simply, “You would soon 
tire of living here : it is not always a 


holiday.” And then, without lifting her 
eyes to his face, she turned to the door, 
and he opened it for her and she was 
gone. 

It was about ten o’clock when they 
went outside for their evening stroll, and 
all the world had grown enchanted 
since they had seen it in the' colors of 
the sunset. There was no night, but a 
strange clearness over the sky and the 
earth, and down in the south the moon 
was rising over the Barvas hills. In the 
dark green meadows the cattle were still 
grazing. Voices of children could be 
heard in the far distance, with the 
rumble of a cart coming through the 
silence, and the murmur of the streams 
flowing down to the loch. The loch 
itself lay like a line of dusky yellow in 
a darkened hollow near the sea, having 
caught on its surface the pale glow of 
the northern heavens, where the sun had 
gone down hours before. The air was 
warm and yet fresh with the odors of the 
Atlantic, and there was a scent of Dutch 
clover coming across from the sandy 
pastures nearer the coast. The huts of 
the small hamlet could but faintly be 
made out beyond the dark and low-lying 
pastures, but a long, pale line of blue 
smoke lay in the motionless air, and the 
voices of the children told of open doors. 
Night after night this same picture, with 
slight variations of position, had been 
placed before the stranger who had come 
to view these solitudes, and night after 
night it seemed to him to grow more 
beautiful. He could put down on paper 
the outlines of an every-day landscape, 
and give them a dash of brilliant color 
to look well on a wall ; but how to carry 
away, except in the memory, any im- 
pression of the strange lambent dark- 
ness, the tender hues, the loneliness and 
the pathos of those northern twilights ? 

They walked down by the side of one 
of the streams toward the sea. But 
Sheila was not his companion on this 
occasion. Her father had laid hold of 
him, and was expounding to him the 
rights of capitalists and various other 
matters. But by and by Lavender drew 
his companion on to talk of Sheila’s 
mother; and here, at least, Mackenzie 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


59 


was neither tedious nor ridiculous nor 
unnecessarily garrulous. It was with a 
strange interest the young man heard 
the elderly man talk of his courtship, 
his marriage, the character of his wife, 
and her goodness and beauty. Was it 
not like looking at a former Sheila ? and 
would not this Sheila now waling before 
him go through the same tender experi- 
ences, and be admired and loved and 
petted by everybody as this other girl 
had been, who brought with her the 
charm of winning ways and a gentle 
nature into these rude wilds? * It was 
the first time he had heard Mackenzie 
speak of his wife, and it turned out m 
be the last ; but from that moment the 
older man had something of dignity in 
the eyes of this younger man, who had 
merely judged of him by his little foibles 
and eccentricities, and would have been 
ready to dismiss him contemptuously as 
a buffoon. There was something, then, 
behind that powerful face, with its deep- 
cut lines, its heavy eyebrows and piercing 
and sometimes sad eyes, besides a mere 
liking for tricks of childish diplomacy ? 
Lavender began to have some respect 
for Sheila’s father, and made a resolu- 
tion to guard against the impertinence 
of humoring him too ostentatiously. 

Was it not hard, though, that Ingram, 
who was so cold and unimpressionable, 
who smiled at the notion of marrying, 
and who was probably enjoying his pipe 
quite as much as Sheila’s familiar talk, 
should have the girl all to himself on 
this witching night ? They reached the 
shores of the Atlantic. There was not 
a breath of wind coming in from the 
sea, but the air seemed even sweeter and 
cooler as they sat down on the great 
bank of shingle. Here and there birds 
were calling, and Sheila could distinguish 
each one of them. As the moon rose 
a faint golden light began to tremble 
here and there on the waves, as if some 
subterranean caverns were lit up and 
sending to the surface faint and fitful 
rays of their splendor. Farther along 
the coast the tall banks of white sand 
grew white in the twilight, and the out- 
lines of the dark pasture-land behind 
grew more distinct. 


But when they rose to go back to Bar- 
vas the moonlight had grown full and 
clear, and the long and narrow loch had 
a pathway of gold across, stretching 
from the reeds and sedges of the one 
side to the reeds and sedges of the other. 
And now Ingram had gone on to join 
Mackenzie, and Sheila walked behind 
with Lavender, and her face was pale 
and beautiful in the moonlight. 

“ I shall be very sorry when I havq to 
leave Lewis,” he said as they walked 
along the path leading through the sand 
and the clover ; and there could be no 
doubt that he felt the regret expressed 
in the words. 

“ But it is no use to speak of leaving 
us yet,” said Sheila cheerfully: ‘‘it is a 
long time before you will go away from 
the Lewis.” 

“And I fancy I shall always think of 
the island just as it is now — with the 
moonlight over there, and a loch near, 
and you walking through the stillness. 
We have had so many evening walks 
like this.” 

“You will make us very vain of our 
island,” said the girl with a smile, “if 
you will speak like that always to us. 
Is there no moonlight in England ? I 
have pictures of English scenery that 
will be far more beautiful than any we 
have here ; and if there is the moon 
here, it will be there too. Think of the 
pictures of the river Thames that my 
papa showed you last night — ” 

“ Oh, but there is nothing like this in 
the South,” said the young man impetu- 
ously. “I do not believe there is in 
the world anything so beautiful as this. 
Sheila, what would you say if I resolved 
to come and live here always ?” 

“ I should like that very much — more 
than you would like it, perhaps,” she 
said with a bright laugh. 

“ That would please you better than 
for you to go always and live in Eng- 
land, would it not ?” 

“ But that is impossible,” she said. 
“ My papa would never think of living 
in England.” 

For some time after he was silent. 
The two figures in front of them walked 
steadily on, an occasional roar of laugh- 


6o 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


ter from the deep chest of Mackenzie 
startling the night air, and telling of In- 
gram’s being in a communicative mood. 
At last Lavender said, “ It seems to me 
so great a pity that you should live in 
this remote place, and have so little 
amusement, and see so few people of 
tastes and education like your own. 
Your papa is so much occupied — he is 
so much older than you, too — that you 
must be left to yourself so much ; where- 
as if you had a companion of your own 
age, who could have the right to talk 
frankly to you, and go about with you, 
and take care of you — ” 

By this time they had reached the 
little wooden bridge crossing the stream, 
and Mackenzie and Ingram had got to 
the inn, where they stood in front of the 
door in the moonlight. Before ascend- 
ing the steps of the bridge, Lavender, 
without pausing in his speech, took 
Sheila’s hand and said suddenly, “Now 
don’t let me alarm you, Sheila, but sup- 
pose at some distant day — as far away 
as you please — I came and asked you 
to let me be your companion then and 
always, wouldn’t you try ?” 

She looked up with a startled glance 
of fear in her eyes, and withdrew her 
hand from him. 

“No, don’t be frightened,” he said quite 
gently. “ I don’t ask you for any prom- 
ise. Sheila, you must know I love you 
— you must have seen it. Will you not 
let me come to you at some future time 
— a long way off— that you may tell me 
then ? Won’t you try to do that ?” 

There was more in the tone of his 
voice than in his words. The girl stood 
irresolute for a second or two, regarding 
him with a strange, wistful, earnest look ; 
and then a great gentleness came into 
her eyes, and she put out her hand to 
him and said in a low voice, “Perhaps.” 

But there was something so grave and 
simple about her manner at this moment 
that he dared not somehow receive it as 
a lover receives the first admission of 
love from the lips of a maiden. There 
had been something of a strange in- 
quiry in her face as she regarded him 
for a second or two ; and now that her 
eyes were bent on the ground it seemed 


to him that she was trying to realize the 
full effect of the concession she had 
made. He would not let her think. He 
took her hand and raised it respectfully 
to his lips, and then he led her forward 
to the bridge. Not a word was spoken 
between them while they crossed the 
shining sjpace of moonlight to the shad- 
ow of the house ; and as they went in- 
doors he caught but one glimpse of her 
eyes, and they were friendly and kind 
toward him, but evidently troubled. He 
saw her no more that night. 

So he had asked Sheila to be his wife, 
d she had given him some timid en- 
gagement as to the future. Many a 
time within these last few days had he 
sketched out an imaginative picture of 
the scene. He was familiar with the 
passionate rapture of lovers on the stage, 
in books and in pictures ; and he had 
described himself (to himself) as intoxi- 
cated with joy, anxious to let the whole 
world know of his good fortune, and 
above all to confide the tidings of his 
happiness to his constant friend and 
companion. But now, as he sat in one 
corner of the room, he almost feared to 
be spoken to by the two men who sat at 
the table with steaming glasses before 
them. He dared nof tell Ingram : he 
had no wish to tell him, even if he had 
got him alone. And as he sat there and 
recalled the incident that had just oc- 
curred by the side of the little bridge, he 
could not wholly understand its mean- 
ing. There had been none of the eager- 
ness, the coyness, the tumult of joy he 
had expected : all he could remember 
clearly was the long look that the large, 
earnest, troubled eyes had fixed upon 
him, while the girl’s face, grown pale in 
the moonlight, seemed somehow ghost- 
like and strange. 


CHAPTER VII. 

AN INTERMEDDLER. 

But in the morning all these idle fan- 
cies fled with the life and color and fresh- 
ness of a new day. Loch Barvas was 
ruffled, into a dark blue by the westerly 
wind, and doubtless the sea out there 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


6r 


was rushing in, green and cold, to the 
shore. The sunlight was warm about 
the house. The trout were leaping in 
the shallow brown streams* and here and 
there a white butterfly fluttered across 
the damp meadows. Was not that Dun- 
can down by the river, accompanied by 
Ingram ? There was a glimmer of a rod 
in the sunshine : the two poachers were 
after trout for Sheila’s breakfast. 

Lavender dressed, went outside and 
looked about for the nearest way down 
to the stream. He wished to have a 
chance of saying a word to his friend 
before Sheila or her father should appear. 
And at last he thought he could do no 
better than go across to the bridge, and 
so make his way down the banks of the 
river. 

What a fresh morning it was, with all 
sorts of sweet scents in the air ! And 
here, sure enough, was a pretty picture 
in the early light — a young girl coming 
over the bridge carrying a load of green 
grass on her back. What would she 
say if he asked her to stop for a moment 
that he might sketch her pretty costume ? 
Her head-dress was a scarlet handker- 
chief, tied behind : she wore a tight-fit- 
ting bodice of cream-white flannel and 
petticoats of gray flannel, while she had 
a waistbelt and pouch of brilliant blue. 
Did she know of these harmonies of 
color or of the picturesqueness of her ap- 
pearance as she came across the bridge 
in the sunlight ? As she drew near she 
stared at the stranger with the big, dumb 
eyes of a wild animal. There was no 
fear, only a sort of surprised observa- 
tion in them. And as she passed she 
uttered, without a smile, some brief and 
laconic salutation in Gaelic, which of 
course the young man could not under- 
stand. He raised his cap, however, and 
said “Good-morning !” and went on, with 
a fixed resolve to learn all the Gaelic that 
Duncan could teach him. 

Surely the tall keeper was in excellent 
spirits this morning. Long before he 
drew near Lavender could hear, in the 
stillness of the morning, that he was tell- 
ing stories about' John the Piper, and of 
his adventures in such distant parts as 
Portree and Oban, and even in Glasgow. 


“And it wass Allan M’Gillivray of 
Styornoway,” Duncan was saying as he 
industriously whipped the shallow runs 
of the stream, “will go to Glasgow with 
John ; and they went through ta Crinan 
Canal. Wass you through ta Crinan 
Canal, sir?” 

“Many a time.” 

“Ay, jist that. And I hef been told 
it iss like a river with ta sides o’ a house 
to it ; and what would Allan care for a 
thing like that, when he hass been to 
America more than twice or four times ? 
And it wass when he fell into the canal, 
he was ferry nearly trooned for all that ; 
and when they pulled him to ta shore he 
wass a ferry angry man. And this iss 
what John says that Allan will say when 
he wass on the side of the canal : ‘ Kott,’ 
says he, ‘ if I wass trooned here, I would 
show my face in Styornoway no more !’ 
But perhaps it iss not true, for he will 
tell many lies, does John the Piper, to 
hef a laugh at a man.” 

“The Crinan Canal is not to be de- 
spised, Duncan,” said Ingram, who was 
sitting on the red sand of the bank, 
“ when you are in it.” 

“And do you know what John says 
that Allan will say to him the first time 
they went ashore at Glasgow ?” 

“ I am sure I don’t.” 

“ It wass many years ago, before that 
Allan will be going many times to Amer- 
ica, and he will neffer hef seen such fine 
shops and ta big houses and hundreds 
and hundreds of people, every one with 
shoes on their feet. And he will say to 
John, ‘John, ef I had known in time I 
should hef been born here.’ But no one 
will believe it iss true, he is such a teffle 
of a liar, that John ; and he will hef some 
stories about Mr. Mackenzie himself, as 
I hef been told, that he will tell when he 
goes to Styornoway. But John is a ferry 
cunning fellow, and will not tell any such 
stories in Borva.” 

“ I suppose if he did, Duncan, you 
would dip him in Loch Roag ?” 

“Oh, there iss more than one,” said 
Duncan with a grim twinkle in his eye 
— “there iss more than one that would 
hef a joke with him if he was to tell 
stories about Mr. Mackenzie.” 


62 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


Lavender had been standing listening, 
unknown to both. He now went for- 
ward arid bade them good-morning, and 
then, having had a look at the trout that 
Duncan had caught, pulled Ingram up 
from the bank, put his arm in his and 
% walked away with him. 

“Ingram,” he said suddenly, with a 
laugh and a shrug, “ you know I always 
come to you when I’m in a fix.” 

“I suppose you do,” said the other, 
" and you are always welcome to what- 
ever help I can give you. But some- 
times it seems to me you rush into fixes, 
with the sort of notion that I am respon- 
sible for getting you out.” 

“ I can assure you nothing of the kind 
is the case. I could not be so ungrateful. 
However, in the mean time — that is — 
the fact is, I asked Sheila last night if 
she would marry me.” 

“The devil you did !” 

Ingram dropped his companion’s arm 
and stood looking at him. 

“Well, I knew you would be angry,” 
said the younger man in a tone of apol- 
ogy. “And I know I have been too pre- 
cipitate, but I thought of the short time 
we should be remaining here, and of the 
difficulty of getting an explanation made 
at another time ; and it was really only 
to give her a hint as to my own feelings 
that I spoke. I could not bear to wait 
any longer.” 

“Never mind about yourself,” said 
Ingram somewhat curtly : “ what did 
Sheila say ?” 

“Well, nothing definite. What could 
you expect a girl to say after so short an 
acquaintance? But this I can tell you, 
that the proposal is not altogether dis- 
tasteful to her, and that I have her per- 
mission to speak of it at some future 
time, when we have known each other 
longer.” 

“You have ?” 

“Yes.” 

“You are quite sure ?” 

“ Certain.” 

“ There is no mistake about her silence, 
for example, that might have led you into 
misinterpreting her wishes altogether ?” 

“ Nothing of the kind is possible. Of 
course I could not ask the girl for any 


promise, or anything of that sort. All 
I asked was, whether she would allow 
me at some future time to ask her more 
definitely; and I am so well satisfied 
with the reply that I am convinced I 
shall marry her.” 

“And is this the fix you wish me to 
help you out of?” said Ingram rather 
coldly. 

" Now, Ingram,” said the younger man 
in penitential tones, “don’t cut up rough 
about it. You know what I mean. Per- 
haps I have been hasty and inconsider- 
ate about it ; but of one thing you may 
be sure, that Sheila will never have to 
complain of me if she marries me. You 
say I don’t know her yet, but there will 
be plenty of time before we are married. 
I don’t propose to carry her off to-mor- 
row morning. Now, Ingram, you know 
what I mean about helping me in the fix 
— helping me with her father, you know, 
and with herself, for the matter of that. 
You can do anything with her, she has 
such a belief in you. You should hear 
how she talks of you — you never heard 
anything like it.” 

It was an innocent bit of flattery, and 
Ingram smiled good-naturedly at the 
boy’s ingenuousness. After all, was he 
not more lovable and more sincere in 
this little bit of simple craft, used in the 
piteousness of his appeal, then when he 
was giving himself the airs of a man- 
about-town, and talking of women in a 
fashion which, to do him justice, ex- 
pressed nothing of his real sentiments ? 

Ingram walked on, and said in his 
slow and deliberate way, “You know I 
opposed this project of yours from the 
first. I don’t think you have acted fair- 
ly by Sheila or her father, or myself 
who brought you here. But if Sheila 
has been drawn into it, why, then, the 
whole affair is altered, and we’ve got to 
make the best of a bad business.” 

“ I was sure you would say that,” ex- 
claimed the younger man with a brighter 
light appearing on his face. “ You may 
call me all the hard names you like : I 
deserve them all, and more. But then, 
as you say, since Sheila is in it, you’ll 
do your best, won’t you ?” 

Frank Lavender could not make out 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


63 


why the taciturn and sallow-faced man 
walking beside him seemed to be greatly 
amused by this speech, but he was in no 
humor to take offence. He knew that 
once Ingram had promised him his help 
he would not lack all the advocacy, the 
advice, and even the money — should 
that become necessary — that a warm- 
hearted and disinterested friend could 
offer. Many and many a time Ingram 
had helped him, and now he was to come 
to his assistance in the most serious cri- 
sis of his life. Ingram would remove 
Sheila’s doubts. Ingram would persuade 
old Mackenzie that girls had to get mar- 
ried some time or other, and that Sheila 
ought to live in London. Ingram would 
be commissioned to break the news to 
Mrs. Lavender — But here, when the 
young man thought of the interview with 
his aunt which he would have to en- 
counter, a cold shiver passed through 
his frame. He would not think of it. 
He would enjoy the present hour. Dif- 
ficulties only grew the bigger the more 
they were looked at : when they were 
left to themselves they frequently dis- 
appeared. It was another proof of In- 
gram’s kindliness that he had not even 
mentioned the old lady down in Ken- 
sington who was likely to have some- 
thing to say about this marriage. 

“ There are a great many difficulties 
in the way,” said Ingram thoughtfully. 

“Yes,” said Lavender with much 
eagerness, “but then, look! You may 
be sure that if we get over these, Sheila 
will know well who managed it, and she 
will not be ungrateful to you, I think. 
If we ever should be married, I am cer- 
tain she will always look on you as her 
greatest friend.” 

"It is a big bribe,” said the elder man, 
perhaps a trifle sadly ; and Lavender 
looked at him with some vague return 
of a suspicion that some time or other 
Ingram must himself have been in love 
with Sheila. 

They returned to the inn, where they 
found Mackenzie busy with a heap of 
letters and newspapers that had been 
sent across to him from Stornoway. The 
whole of the breakfast-table was littered 
with wrappers and big blue envelopes : 

5 


where was Sheila, who usually waited 
on her father at such times to keep his 
affairs in order ? 

Sheila was outside, and Lavender saw 
her through the open window. Was she 
not waiting for him, that she should pace 
up and down by herself, with her face 
turned away from the house ? He im- 
mediately went out and went over to her, 
and she turned to him as he approached. 
He fancied she looked a trifle pale, and 
far less bright and joyous than the ordi- 
nary Sheila. 

“Mr. Lavender,” she said, walking 
away from the house, “ I wish very much 
to speak to you for a moment. Last 
night it was all a misfortune that I did 
not understand ; and I wish you to forget 
that a word was ever spoken about that.” 

Her head was bent down, and her 
speech was low and broken : what she 
failed to explain in words her manner 
explained for her. But her companion 
said to her, with alarm and surprise in 
his tone, “Why, Sheila! You cannot 
be so cruel ! Surely you need not fear 
any embarrassment through so slight a 
promise. It pledges you to nothing — it 
leaves you quite free ; and some day, if 
I come and ask you then a question I 
have not asked you yet, that will be time 
enough to give me an answer.” r 

“Oh no, no!” said the girl, obviously 
in great distress, “ I cannot do that. It 
is unjust to you to let you think of it and 
hope about it. It was last night every- 
thing was strange to me — I did not un- 
derstand then — but I have thought about 
it all the night through, and now I know.” 

“Sheila!” called her father from the 
inside of the inn, and she turned to go. 

“But you do not ask that, do you?” 
he said. “You are only frightened a 
little bit just now, but that will go away. 
There is nothing to be frightened about. 
You have been thinking over it, and 
imagining impossible things : you have 
been thinking of leaving Borva alto- 
gether — ” 

“Oh, that I can never do!” she said 
with a pathetic earnestness. 

“But why think of such a thing?” he 
said. “ You need not look at all the pos- 
sible troubles of life when you take such 


6 4 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


a simple step as this. Sheila, don’t be 
hasty in any such resolve : you may be 
sure all the gloomy things you have been 
thinking of will disappear when we get 
close to them. And this is such a simple 
thing. I don’t ask you to say you will 
be my wife — I have no right to ask you 
yet — but I have only asked permission 
of you to let me think of it ; and even 
Mr. Ingram sees no great harm in that.” 

“ Does he know ?” she said with a start 
of surprise and fear. 

“Yes,” said Lavender, wishing he had 
bitten his tongue in two before he had 
uttered the word. ‘‘You know we have 
no secrets from each other ; and to whom 
could I go for advice but to your oldest 
friend ?” 

‘‘And what did he say?” she asked 
with a strange look in her eyes. 

‘‘Well, he sees a great many difficul- 
ties, but he thinks they will easily be got 
over.” 

‘‘Then,” she said, with her eyes again 
cast down and a certain sadness in her 
tone, “ I must explain to him too, and 
tell him I had no understanding of what 
I said last night.” 

“Sheila, you won’t do that!” urged 
the young man. “ It means nothing — 
it pledges you to nothing.” 

“ Sheila ! Sheila !” cried her father 
cheerily from the window, “come in and 
let us hef our breakfast.” 

“Yes, papa,” said the girl, and she 
went into the house, followed by her 
companion. 

But how could she find an opportunity 
of making this explanation ? Shortly 
after breakfast the wagonette was at the 
door of the little Barvas inn, and Sheila 
came out of the house and took her 
place in it with an unusual quietness of 
manner and hopelessness of look. In- 
gram, sitting opposite to her, and know- 
ing nothing of what had taken place, 
fancied that this was but an expression 
of girlish timidity, and that it was his 
business to interest her and amuse her 
until she should forget the strangeness 
and newness of her position. Nay, as 
he had resolved to make the best of 
matters as they stood, and as he believed 
that Sheila had half confessed to a special 


liking for his friend from the South, what 
more fitting thing could he do than en- 
deavor to place Lavender in the most 
favorable light in her eyes ? He began 
to talk of all the brilliant and successful 
things the young man had done as fully 
as he could before himself. He con- 
trived to introduce pretty anecdotes of 
Lavender’s generosity ; and there were 
plenty of these, for the young fellow had 
never a thought of consequences if he 
was touched by a tale of distress, and if 
he could help the sufferer either with his 
own or any one else’s money. Ingram 
talked of all their excursions together, 
in Devonshire, in Brittany and else- 
where, to impress on Sheila how well he 
knew his friend and how long their in- 
timacy had lasted. At first the girl was 
singularly reserved and silent, but some- 
how, as pleasant recollections were mul- 
tiplied, and as Lavender seemed to have 
been always the associate and compan- 
ion of this old friend of hers, some bright- 
er expression came into her face and she 
grew more interested. Lavender, not 
knowing whether or not to take her de- 
cision of that morning as final, and not 
wholly perceiving the aim of this kindly 
chat on the part of his friend, began to 
see at least that Sheila was pleased to 
hear the two men help out each other's 
stories about their pedestrian excursions, 
and that she at last grew bold enough 
to look up and meet his eyes in a timid 
fashion when she asked him a question. 

So they drove along by the side of the 
sea, the level and well-made road lead- 
ing them through miles and miles of 
rough moorland, with here and there a 
few huts or a sheepfold to break' the 
monotony of the undulating sky-line. 
Here and there, too, there were great 
cuttings of the peat-moss, with a thin 
line of water in the foot of the deep 
black trenches. Sometimes, again, they 
would escape altogether from any traces 
of human habitation, and Duncan would 
grow excited in pointing out to Miss 
Sheila the young grouse that had run 
off the road into the heather, where they 
stood and eyed the passing carriage with 
anything but a frightened air. And 
while Mackenzie hummed something re- 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


^5 


sembling, but very vaguely resembling, 
“ Love in thine eyes sits beaming,” and 
while Ingram, in his quiet, desultory, 
and often sardonic fashion, amused the 
young girl with stories of her lover’s 
bravery and kindness and dare-devil 
escapades, the merry trot of the horses 
beat time to the bells on their necks, 
the fresh west wind blew a cloud of 
white dust away over the moorland be- 
hind them, there was a blue sky shining 
all around them, and the blue Atlantic 
basking in the light. 

They stopped for a few minutes at 
both the hamlets of Suainabost and 
Tabost to allow Sheila to pay a hurried 
visit to one or two of the huts, while 
Mackenzie, laying hold of some of the 
fishermen he knew, got them to show 
Lavender the curing-houses, in which 
the young gentleman professed himself 
profoundly interested. They also visited 
the school-house, and Lavender found 
himself beginning to look upon a two- 
storied building, with windows as some- 
thing imposing and a decided triumph 
of human skill and enterprise. But 
what was the school-house of Tabost to 
the grand building at the Butt ? They 
had driven away from the high-road by 
a path leading through long and sweet- 
smelling pastures of Dutch clover; they 
had got up from these sandy swathes to 
a table-land of rock ; and here and there 
they caught glimpses of fearful precipices 
leading sheer down to the boiling and 
dashing sea. The curious contortions 
of the rocks, the sharp needles of them 
springing in isolated pillars from out of 
the water, the roar of the eddying cur- 
rents that swept through the chasms and 
dashed against the iron-bound shore, 
the wild sea-birds that flew about and 
screamed over the rushing waves and 
the surge, naturally enough drew the at- 
tention of the strangers altogether away 
from the land ; and it was with a start 
of surprise they found themselves before 
an immense mass of yellow stone-work 
— walls, house and tower — that shone in 
the sunlight. And here were the light- 
house-keeper and his wife, delighted to 
see strange faces and most hospitably 
inclined ; insomuch that Lavender, who 


cared little for luncheon at any time, 
was constrained to take as much bread 
and cheese and butter and whisky as 
would have made a ploughman’s din- 
ner. It was a strange sort of meal this, 
away out at the end of the world, as it 
were. The snug little room might have 
been in the Marylebone road : there 
were photographs about, a gay label on 
the whisky-bottle, and other signs of an 
advanced civilization ; but outside noth- 
ing but the wild precipices of the coast, 
a surging sea that seemed almost to sur- 
round the place, the wild screaming of 
the sea-birds, and a single ship appear- 
ing like a mere speck on the northern 
horizon. 

They had not noticed the wind much 
as they drove along; but now, when 
they went out on to the high table-land 
of rock, it seemed to be blowing half 
a gale across the sea. The sunlight 
sparkled on the glass of the lighthouse, 
and the great yellow shaft of stone 
stretched away upward into a perfect 
blue. As clear a blue lay far beneath 
them when the sea came rushing in 
among the lofty crags and sharp pin- 
nacles of rock, bursting into foam at 
their feet, and sending long jets of white 
spray up into the air. In front of the 
great wall of rock the sea-birds wheeled 
and screamed, and on the points of 
some of the islands stood several scarts, 
motionless figures of jet black on the 
soft brown and green of the rock. And 
what was this island they looked down 
upon from over one of the bays ? Surely 
a mighty reproduction by Nature her- 
self of the Sphynx of the Egyptian 
plains. Could anything have been more 
striking and unexpected and impressive 
than the sudden discovery of this great 
mass of rock resting in the wild sea, its 
hooded head turned away toward the 
north and hidden from the spectator on 
land, its gigantic bulk surrounded by a 
foam of breakers ? Lavender, with his 
teeth set hard against the wind, must 
needs take down the outlines of this 
strange scene upon paper, while Sheila 
crouched at her father’s side for shel- 
ter, and Ingram was chiefly engaged in 
holding on to his cap. 


66 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


“ It blows here a bit,” said Lavender 
amid the roar of the waves. “ I suppose 
in the winter-time the sea will sometimes 
break across this place ?” 

“Ay, and over the top of the light- 
house too,” said Mackenzie with a 
laugh, as though he was rather proud 
of the way his native seas behaved. 

“ Sheila,” said Ingram, “ I never saw 
you take refuge from the wind before.” 

“ It is because we will be standing 
still,” said the girl with a smile which 
was scarcely visible, because she had 
half hidden her face in her father’s great 
gray beard. “ But when Mr. Lavender 
is finished we will go down to the great 
hole in the rocks that you will have seen 
before, and perhaps he will make a pic- 
ture of that too.” 

“You don’t mean to say you would 
go down there, Sheila ?” said Ingram, 
“ and in this wind ?” 

“I have been down many times be- 
fore.” 

“Indeed, you will do nothing of the 
kind, Sheila,” said her father: “you 
will go back to the lighthouse if you 
like — yes, you may do that — and I will 
go down the rocks with Mr. Lavender ; 
but it iss not for a young lady to go 
about among the rocks, like a fisher- 
man’s lad that wants the birds’ eggs, or 
such nonsense.” 

It was quite evident that Mackenzie 
had very little fear of his daughter not 
being able to accomplish the descent of 
the rocks safely enough : it was a mat- 
ter of dignity. And so Sheila was at 
length persuaded to go across the plain 
to a sheltered place, to wait there until 
the others should clamber down to 
the great and naturally-formed tunnel 
through the rocks that the artist was to 
sketch. 

Lavender was ill at ease. He followed 
his guide mechanically as they made 
their way, in zigzag fashion, down the 
precipitous slopes and over slippery 
plateaus ; and when at last he came in 
sight of the mighty arch, the long cavern, 
and the glimmer of sea and shore that 
could be seen through it, he began to 
put down the outlines of the picture 
as rapidly as possible, but with little in- 


terest in the matter. Ingram was sitting 
on the bare rocks beside him, Macken- 
zie was some distance off: should he 
tell his friend of what Sheila had said in 
the morning? Strict honesty, perhaps, 
demanded as much, but the temptation 
to say nothing was great. For it was 
evident that Ingram was now well in- 
clined to the project, and would do his 
best to help it on ; whereas, if once he 
knew that Sheila had resolved against 
it, he too might take some sudden step 
— such as insisting on their immediate 
return to the mainland — which would 
settle the matter for ever. Sheila had 
said she would herself make the neces- 
sary explanation to Ingram, but she had 
not done so : perhaps she might lack 
the courage or an opportunity to do so, 
and in the mean time was not the inter- 
val altogether favorable to his chances ? 
Doubtless she was a little frightened at 
first. She would soon get less timid, 
and would relent and revoke her de- 
cision of the morning. He would not, 
at present at any rate, say anything to 
Ingram. 

But when they had got up again to the 
summit of the rocks, an incident occur- 
red that considerably startled him out 
of these vague and anxious speculations. 
He walked straight over to the sheltered 
spot in which Sheila was waiting. The 
rushing of the wind doubtless drowned 
the sound of his footsteps, so that he 
came on her unawares ; and on seeing 
him she rose suddenly from the rock on 
which she had been sitting, with some 
effort to hide her face away from him. 
But he had caught a glimpse of some- 
thing in her eyes that filled him with 
remorse. 

“Sheila,” he said, going forward to 
her, “what is the matter? What are 
you unhappy about ?” 

She could not answer; she held her 
face turned from him and cast down ; 
and then, seeing her father and Ingram 
in the distance, she set out to follow them 
to the lighthouse, Lavender walking by 
her side, and wondering how he could 
deal with the distress that was only too 
clearly written on her face. 

“ I know it is I who have grieved you,” 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


67 


he said m a low voice, “and I am very 
sorry. But if you will tell me what I 
can do to remove this unhappiness, I 
will do it now. Shall I consider our 
talking together of last night as if it had 
not taken place at all ?” 

“Yes,” she said in as low a voice, but 
clear and sad and determined in its 
tone. 

“And I shall speak no more to you 
about this affair until I go away alto- 
gether ?” 

And again she signified her assent, 
gravely and firmly. 

“And then,” he said, “you will soon 
forget all about it ; for of course I shall 
never come back to Lewis again.” 

"Never ?” 

The word had escaped her unwilling- 
ly, and it was accompanied by a quick 
upturning of the face and a frightened 
look in the beautiful eyes. 

“ Do you wish me to come back ?” he 
said. 

“ I should not wish you to go away 
from the Lewis through any fault of 
mine, and say that we should never see 
you again,” said the girl in measured 
tones, as if she were nerving herself to 
make the admission, and yet fearful of 
saying too much. 

By this time Mackenzie and Ingram 
had gone round the big wall of the light- 
house : there were no human beings on 
this lonely bit of heath but themselves. 
Lavender stopped her and took her 
hand, and said, “Don’t you see, Sheila, 
how I must never come back to Lewis 
if all this is to be forgotten ? And all I 
want you to say is, that I may come 
some day to see if you can make up your 
mind to be my wife. I don’t ask that 
yet : it is out of the question, seeing how 
short a time you have known anything 
about me, and I cannot wish you to trust 
me as I can trust you. It is a very little 
thing I ask — only to give me a chance 
at some future time, and then, if you 
don’t care for me sufficiently to marry 
me, or if anything stands in the way, all 
you need do is to send me a single word, 
and that will suffice. This is no terrible 
thing that I beg from you, Sheila. You 
needn’t be afraid of it.” 


But she was afraid : there was noth- 
ing but fear and doubt and grief in her 
eyes as she gazed into the unknown 
world laid open before her. 

“ Can’t you ask some one to tell you 
that it is nothing dreadful — Mr. Ingram, 
for example ?” 

“ I could not.” 

“Your papa, then,” he said, driven to 
this desperate resource by his anxiety to 
save her from pain. 

“Not yet — not just yet,” she said 
almost wildly, “ for how could I explain 
to him ? He would ask me what my 
wishes were: what could I say? I do 
not know. I cannot tell myself ; and — 
and — I have no mother to ask.” And 
here all the strain of self-control gave 
way, and fike girl burst into tears. 

“Sheila, dear Sheila,” he said, “why 
won’t you trust your own heart, and let 
that be your guide ? Won’t you say this 
one word Yes, and tell me that I am to 
come back to Lewis some day, and ask 
to see you, and get a message from one 
look of your eyes ? Sheila, may not I 
come back ?” 

If there was a reply it was so low that 
he scarcely heard it ; but somehow — 
whether from the small hand that lay in 
his, or from the eyes that sent one brief 
message of trust and hope through their 
tears — his question was answered; and 
from that moment he felt no more mis- 
givings, but let his love for Sheila spread 
out and blossom in whatever light of 
fancy and imagination he could bring to 
bear on it, careless of any future. 

How the young fellow laughed and 
joked as the party drove away again 
from the Butt, down the long coast-road 
to Barvas ! He was tenderly respectful 
and a little moderate in tone when he ad- 
dressed Sheila, but with the others he gave 
way to a wild exuberance of spirits that 
delighted Mackenzie beyond measure. 
He told stories of the odd old gentlemen 
of his club, of their opinions, their ways, 
their dress. He sang the song of the 
Arethusa, and the wilds of Lewis echoed 
with a chorus which was not just as har- 
monious as it might have been. He 
sang the “Jug of Punch,” and Macken- 
zie said that was a teffle of a good song. 


68 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


He gave imitations of some of Ingram’s 
companions at the Board of Trade, and 
showed Sheila what the inside of a gov- 
ernment office was like. He paid Mac- 
kenzie the compliment of asking him for 
a drop of something out of his flask, and 
in return he insisted on the King smoking 
a cigar which, in point of age and sweet- 
ness and fragrance, was really the sort 
of cigar you would naturally give to the 
man whose only daughter you wanted to 
marry. 

Ingram understood all this, and was 
pleased to see the happy look that Shei- 
la wore. He talked to her with even a 
greater assumption than usual of father- 
ly fondness ; and if she was a little shy, 
was it not because she was conscious of 
so great a secret ? He was e*en unusu- 
ally complaisant to Lavender, and lost 
no opportunity of paying him indirect 
compliments that Sheila could overhear. 

“ You poor young things !” he seemed 
to be saying to himself, “you’ve got all 
your troubles before you ; but in the 
mean time you may make yourselves as 
happy as you can.” 

Was the weather at last about to break ? 
As the afternoon wore on the heavens 
became overcast, for the wind had gone 
back from the course of the sun, and 
had brought up great masses of cloud 
from the rainy south-west. 

“Are we going to have a storm ?” said 
Lavender, looking along the southern 
sky, where the Barvas hills were mo- 
mentarily growing blacker under the 
gathering darkness overhead. 

"A storm?” said Mackenzie, whose 
notions on what constituted a storm were 
probably different from those of his guest. 
“No, there will be no storm. But it is 
no bad thing if we get back to Barvas 
very soon.” 

Duncan sent the horses on, and In- 
gram looked out Sheila’s waterproof and 
the rugs. The southern sky certainly 
looked ominous. There was a strange 
intensity of color in the dark landscape, 
from the deep purple of the Barvas hills, 
coming forward to the deep green of the 
pasture-land around them, and the rich 
reds and browns of the heath and the 
peat-cuttings. At one point of the cloud- 


ed and hurrying sky,' however, there was 
a soft and vaporous line of yellow in the 
gray ; and under that, miles away in the 
west, a great dash of silver light struck 
upon the sea, and glowed there so that 
the eye could scarcely bear it. Was it 
the damp that brought the perfumes of 
the moorland so distinctly toward them 
— the bog- myrtle, the water-mint and 
wild thyme ? There were no birds to 
be heard. The crimson masses of heath- 
er on the gray rocks seemed to have 
grown richer and deeper in color, and 
the Barvas hills had become large and 
weird in the gloom. 

“Are you afraid of thunder?” said 
Lavender to Sheila. 

“No,” said the girl, looking frankly 
toward him with her glad eyes, as though 
he had pleased her by asking that not 
very striking question. And then she 
looked round at the sea and the sky 
in the south, and said quietly, “ But 
there will be no thunder : it is too much 
wind.” 

Ingram, with a smile which he could 
scarcely conceal, hereupon remarked, 
“You’r.e sorry, Lavender, I know. 
Wouldn’t you like to shelter somebody 
in danger or attempt a rescue, or do 
something heroic ?” 

“And Mr. Lavender would do that if 
there was any need,” said the girl brave- 
ly, “and then it would be nothing to 
laugh at.” 

“ Sheila, you bad girl ! how dare you 
talk like that to me ?” said Ingram; and 
he put his arm within hers and said he 
would tell her a story. 

But this race to escape the storm was 
needless, for they were just getting 
within sight of Barvas when a surpris- 
ing change came over the dark and 
thunderous afternoon. The hurrying 
masses of cloud in the west parted for a 
little space, and there was a sudden and 
fitful glimmer of a stormy blue sky. 
Then a strange soft yellow and vapor- 
ous light shot across to the Barvas hills, 
and touched up palely the great slopes, 
rendering them distant, ethereal and 
cloud-like. Then a shaft or two of wild 
light flashed down upon the landscape 
beside them. The cattle shone red in 


A PRINCESS 

the brilliant green pastures. The gray 
rocks glowed in their setting of moss. 
The stream going by Barvas Inn was a 
streak of gold in its sandy bed. And 
then the sky above them broke into 
great billows of cloud — tempestuous and 
rounded masses of golden vapor that 
burned with the wild glare of the sun- 
set. The clear spaces in the sky widen- 
ed, and from time to time the wind 
sent ragged bits of yellow cloud across 
the shining blue. All the world seemed 
to be on fire, and the very smoke of it, 
the majestic masses of vapor that rolled 
by overhead, burned with a bewildering 
glare. Then, as the wind still blew 
hard, and kept veering round again to 
the north-west, the fiercely-lit clouds 
were driven over one by one, leaving a 
pale and serene sky to look down on 
the sinking sun and the sea. The At- 
lantic caught the yellow glow on its 
tumbling waves, and a deeper color 
stole across the slopes and peaks of the 
Barvas hills. Whither had gone the 
storm ? There were still some banks of 
clouds away up in the north-east, and 
in the clear green of the evening sky 
they had their distant grays and purples 
faintly tinged with rose. 

“ And so you are anxious and fright- 
ened, and a little pleased ?” said Ingram 
to Sheila that evening, after he had 
frankly told her what he knew, and in- 
vited her further confidence. “That is 
all I can gather from you, but it is 
enough. Now you can leave the rest to 
me.” 

“To you?” said the girl with a blush 
of pleasure and surprise. 

“ Yes. I like new experiences. I am 
going to become an intermeddler now. I 
am going to arrange this affair, and be- 
come the negotiator between all the 
parties ; and then, when I have secured 
the happiness of the whole of you, you 
will all set upon me and beat me with 
sticks, and thrust me out of your 
houses.” 

“ I do not think,” said Sheila, looking 
down, “that you have much fear of that, 
Mr. Ingram.” 


OF THULE. 69 

“ Is the world going to alter because 
of me ?” 

“ I would rather not have you try to 
do anything that is likely to get you into 
unhappiness,” she said. 

“Oh, but that is absurd. You timid 
young folks can’t act for yourselves. 
You want agents and instruments that 
have got hardened by use. Fancy the 
condition of our ancestors, you know, 
before they had the sense to invent steel 
claws to tear their food in pieces — what 
could they do with their fingers ? I am 
going to be your knife and fork, Sheila, 
and you’ll see what I shall carve out for 
you. All you’ve got to do is to keep 
your spirits up, and believe that nothing 
dreadful is going to take place merely 
because some day you will be asked to 
marry. You let things take their ordi- 
nary course. Keep your spirits up — 
don’t neglect your music or your dinner 
or your poor people down in Borvabost 
— and you’ll see it will all come right 
enough. In a year or two, or less than 
that, you will marry contentedly and 
happily, and your papa will drink a 
good glass of whisky at the wedding 
and make jokes about it, and everything 
will be as right as the mail. That’s my 
advice : see you attend to it.” 

“ You are very kind to me,” said the 
girl in a low voice. 

“ But if you begin to cry, Sheila, then 
I throw up my duties. Do you hear? 
Now look : there goes Mr. Lavender 
down to the boat with a bundle of rugs, 
and I suppose you mean me to imperil 
my precious life by sailing about these 
rocky channels in the moonlight ? Come 
along down to the shore ; and mind you 
please your papa by singing ‘ Love in 
thine eyes’ with Mr. Lavender. And 
if you would add to that ‘The Minute 
Gun at Sea,’ why, you know, I may as 
well have my little rewards for inter- 
meddling now, as I shall have to suffer 
afterward.” 

“Not through me,” said Sheila in 
rather an uncertain voice ; and then they 
went down to the Maighdean-mhara. 


PART IV 


CHAPTER VIII. 

“O TERQUE QUATERQUE BEATE !” 

C ONSIDER what a task this unhap- 
py man Ingram had voluntarily un- 
dertaken ! Here were two young people 
presumably in love. One of them was 
laid under suspicion by several previous 
love-affairs, though none of these, doubt- 
less, had been so serious as the present. 
The other scarcely knew her own mind, 
or perhaps was afraid to question herself 
too closely, lest all the conflict between 
duty and inclination, with its fears and 
anxieties and troubles, should be too 
suddenly revealed. Moreover, this girl 
was the only daughter of a solitary and 
irascible old gentleman living in a re- 
mote island ; and Ingram had not only 
undertaken that the love-affairs of the 
young folks should come all right — thus 
assuming a responsibility which might 
have appalled the bravest — but was also 
expected to inform the King of Borva 
that his daughter was about to be taken 
away from him. 

Of course, if Sheila had been a prop- 
erly brought-up young lady, nothing of 
this sort would have been necessary. 
We all know what the properly brought- 
up young lady does under such circum- 
stances. She goes straight to her papa 
and mamma and says, “ My dear papa 
and mamma, I have been taught by my 
various instructors that I ought to have 
no secrets from my dear parents ; and I 
therefore hasten to lay aside any little 
shyness or modesty or doubt of my own 
wishes I might feel, for the purpose of 
explaining to you the extent to which 
I have become a victim to the tender 
passion, and of soliciting your advice. I 
also place before you these letters I have 
received from the gentleman in question : 
probably they were sent in confidence 
to me, but I must banish any scruples 
that do not coincide with my duty to 
you. I may say that I respect, and even 
admire, Mr. So-and-So ; and I should be 


unworthy of the care bestowed upon my 
education by my dear parents if I were 
altogether insensible to the advantages 
of his worldly position. But beyond this 
point I am at a loss to define my senti- 
ments ; and so I ask you, my dear papa 
and mamma, for permission to study the 
question for some little time longer, when 
I may be able to furnish you with a more 
accurate report of my feelings. At the 
same time, if the interest I have in this 
young man is likely to conflict with the 
duty I owe to my dear parents, I ask to 
be informed of the fact ; and I shall then 
teach myself to guard against the ap- 
proach of that insidious passion which 
might make me indifferent to the higher 
calls and interests of life.” Happy the 
man who marries such a woman ! No 
agonizing quarrels and delirious recon- 
ciliations, no piteous entreaties and fits 
of remorse and impetuous self-sacrifices 
await him, but a beautiful, methodical, 
placid life, as calm and accurate and 
steadily progressive as the multiplication 
table. His household will be a miracle 
of perfect arrangement. The relations 
between the members of it will be as 
strictly defined as the pattern of the 
paper on the walls. And how can a 
quarrel arise when a dissecter of the 
emotions is close at hand to say where 
the divergence of opinion or interest be- 
gan ? and how can a fit of jealousy be 
provoked in the case of a person who 
will split up her affections into fifteen 
parts, give ten-fifteenths to her children, 
three-fifteenths to her parents, and the 
remainder to her husband? Should 
there be any dismal fractions going 
about, friends and acquaintances may 
come in for them. 

But how was Sheila to go to her father 
and explain to him what she could not ex- 
plain to herself? She had never dream- 
ed of marriage. She had never thought 
of having to leave Borva and her father’s 
house. But she had some vague feeling 


A PRINCESS OF TIIULE. 


7 1 


that in the future lay many terrible pos- 
sibilities that she did not as yet dare to 
look at — until, at least, she was more 
satisfied as to the present. And how 
could she go to her father with such a 
chaos of unformed wishes and fears to 
place before him ? That such a duty 
should have devolved upon Ingram was 
certainly odd enough, but it was not her 
doing. His knowledge of the position 
of these young people was not derived 
from her. But, having got it, he had 
himself asked her to leave the whole 
affair in his hands, with that kindness 
and generosity which had more than 
once filled her heart with an unspeak- 
able gratitude toward him. 

“Well, you are a good fellow!” said 
Lavender to him when he heard of this 
decision. 

“ Bah !” said the other with a shrug 
of his shoulders. “ I mean to amuse my- 
self. I shall move you about like pieces 
on a chess-board, and have a pretty 
game with you. How to checkmate the 
king with a knight and a princess, in 
any number of moves you like — that 
is the problem ; and my princess has a 
strong power over the king where she is 
just now.” 

“It’s an uncommonly awkward busi- 
ness, you know, Ingram,” said Laven- 
der ruefully. 

“ Well, it is. Old Mackenzie is a tough 
old fellow to deal with, and you’ll do no 
good by making a fight of it. Wait ! 
Difficulties don’t look so formidable 
when you take them one by one as they 
turn up. If you really love the girl, and 
mean to take your chance of getting her, 
and if she cares enough for you to sac- 
rifice a good deal for your sake, there is 
nothing to fear.” 

“I can answer for myself, any way,” 
said Lavender > in a tone of voice that 
Ingram rather liked: the young man 
did not always speak with the same 
quietness, thoughtfulness and modesty. 

And how naturally and easily it came 
about, after all ! They were back again 
at Borva. They had driven round and 
about Lewis, and had finished up with 
Stornoway ; and, now that they had got 
back to the island in Loch Roag, the 


quaint little drawing-room had even to 
Lavender a homely and friendly look. 
The big stuffed fishes and the sponge 
shells were old acquaintances; and he 
went to hunt up Sheila’s music just as 
if he had known that dusky corner for 
years. 

“Yes, yes,” called Mackenzie, “it iss 
the English songs we will try now.” 

He had a notion that he was himself 
rather a good hand at a part song — just 
as Sheila had innocently taught him to 
believe that he was a brilliant whist- 
player when he had mastered the art of 
returning his partner’s lead — but for- 
tunately at this moment he was engaged 
with a long pipe and a big tumbler of hot 
whisky and water. Ingram was similar- 
ly employed, lying back in a cane-bot- 
tomed easy-chair, and placidly watching 
the smoke ascending to the roof. Some- 
times he cast an eye to the young folks 
at the other end of the room. They 
formed a pretty sight, he thought. Lav- 
ender was a good-looking fellow enough, 
and there was something pleasing in the 
quiet and assiduous fashion in which he 
waited upon Sheila, and in the almost 
timid way in which he spoke to her. 
Sheila herself sat at the piano, clad all 
in slate-gray silk, with a narrow band of 
scarlet velvet round her neck ; and it 
was only by a chance turning of the 
head that Ingram caught the tender and 
handsome profile, broken only by the 
outward sweep of the long eyelashes. 

Love in thine eyes for ever plays, 

Sheila sang, with her father keeping time 
by patting his forefinger on the table. 

He in thy snewy bosom strays, 

sang Lavender ; and then the two voices 
joined together : 

He makes thy rosy lips his care. 

And walks the mazes of thy hair. 

Or were there not three voices ? Sure- 
ly, from the back part of the room, the 
musicians could hear a wandering bass 
come in from time to time, especially 
at such portions as “Ah, he never — ah, 
he never touched thy heart !” which old 
Mackenzie considered very touching. 
But there was something quaint and 
friendly and pleasant in the pathos of 


7 2 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


those English songs, which made them 
far more acceptable to him than Sheila’s 
wild and melancholy legends of the sea. 
He sang “ Ah, he never, never touched 
thy heart!” with an outward expression 
of grief, but with much inward satisfac- 
tion. Was it the quaint phraseology of 
the old duets that awoke in him some 
faint ambition after histrionic effect ? At 
all events, Sheila proceeded to another 
of his favorites, “All’s Well,” and here, 
amid the brisk music, the old man had 
an excellent opportunity of striking in 
at random — 

The careful watch patrols the deck 

To guard the ship from foes or wreck. 

These two lines he had absolutely mas- 
tered, and always sang them, whatever 
might be the key he happened to light 
on, with great vigor. He soon went the 
length of improvising a part for himself 
in the closing passages, and laid down 
his pipe altogether as he sang — 

What cheer ? Brother, quickly tell ! 

Above ! Below ! Good-night ! All, all’s well ! 

From that point, however, Sheila and 
her companion wandered away into 
fields of melody whither the King of 
Borva could not follow them ; so he was 
content to resume his pipe and listen 
placidly to the pretty airs. He caught 
but bits and fragments of phrases and 
sentiments, but they evidently were com- 
fortable, merry, good-natured songs for 
young folks to sing. There was a good 
deal of love-making, and rosy morns 
appearing, and merry zephyrs, and such 
odd things, which, sung briskly and 
gladly by two young and fresh voices, 
rather drew the hearts of contemplative 
listeners to the musicians. 

“ They sing very well whatever,” said 
Mackenzie with a critical air to Ingram 
when the young people were so busily 
engaged with their own affairs as ap- 
parently to forget the presence of the 
others. “Oh yes, they sing very well 
whatever; and what should the young 
folks sing about but making love and 
courting, and all that ?” 

“Natural enough,” said Ingram, look- 
ing rather wistfully at the two at the other 
end of the room. “ I suppose Sheila will 
have a sweetheart some day ?” 


“ Oh yes, Sheila will hef a sweetheart 
some day,” said her father good-humor- 
edly. “ Sheila is a good-looking girl : she 
will hef a sweetheart some day.” 

“ She will be marrying too, I suppose,” 
said Ingram cautiously. 

“Oh yes, she will marry— Sheila will 
marry : what will be the life of a young 
girl if she does not marry ?” 

At this moment, as Ingram afterward 
described it, a sort of “ flash of inspira- 
tion ” darted in upon him, and he re- 
solved there and then to brave the wrath 
of the old king, and place all the con- 
spiracy before him, if only the music 
kept loud enough to prevent his being 
overheard. 

“It will be hard on you to part with 
Sheila when she marries,” said Ingram, 
scarcely daring to look up. 

“Oh, ay, it will be that,” said Mac- 
kenzie cheerfully enough. “But it iss 
every one will hef to do that, and no 
great harm comes of it. Oh no, it will 
not be much whatever ; and Sheila, she 
will be very glad in a little while after, 
and it will be enough for me to see that 
she is ferry contented and happy. The 
young folk must marry, you will see ; 
and what is the use of marrying if it is 
not when they are young f But Sheila, 
she will think of none of these things. 
It was young Mr. MacIntyre of Suther- 
land — you hef seen him last year in 
Stornoway : he hass three thousand acres 
of a deer forest in Sutherland — and he 
will be ferry glad to marry my Sheila. 
But I will say to him, 4 It is not for me 
to say yes or no to you, Mr. MacIntyre : 
it is Sheila herself will tell you that.’ 
But he wass afraid to speak to her ; and 
iSheila herself will know nothing of why 
he came twice to Borva the last year.” 

“ It is very good of you to leave Sheila 
quite unbiased in her choice,” said In- 
gram : “many fathers would have been 
sorely tempted by that deer forest.” 

Old Mackenzie laughed a loud laugh 
of derision, that fortunately did not stop 
Lavender’s execution of “ I would that 
my love would silently.” 

“What the teffle,” said Mackenzie, 
“hef I to want a deer forest for my 
Sheila? Sheila is no fisherman’s lass. 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


73 


She has plenty for herself, and she will 
marry just the young man she wants to 
marry, and no other one : that is what 
she will do, by Kott !” 

All this was most hopeful. If Mac- 
kenzie had himself been advocating 
Lavender’s suit, could he have said 
more ? But notwithstanding all these 
frank and generous promises, dealing 
with a future which the old man consid- 
ered as indefinitely remote, Ingram was 
still afraid of the announcement he was 
about to make. 

“Sheila is fortunately situated,” he 
said, “ in having a father who thinks only 
of her happiness. But I suppose she 
has never yet shown a preference for any 
one ?” . 

“Not for any one but yourself,” said 
her father with a laugh. 

And Ingram laughed too, but in an 
embarrassed way, and his sallow face 
grew darker with a blush. Was there 
not something painful in the uninten- 
tional implication that of course Ingram 
could not be considered a possible lover 
of Sheila’s, and that the girl herself was 
so well aware of it that she could openly 
testify to her regard for him ? 

“And it would be a good thing for 
Sheila,” continued her father, more 
gravely, “ if there wass any young man 
about the Lewis that she would tek a 
liking to ; for it will be some day I can 
no more look after her, and it would be 
bad for her to be left alone all by her- 
self in the island.” 

“And you don’t think you see before 
you now some one who might take on 
him the charge "of Sheila’s future ?” said 
Ingram, looking toward Lavender. 

“The English gentleman ?” said Mac- 
kenzie with a smile. “ No, that any way 
is not possible.” 

“I fancy it is more than possible,” 
said Ingram, resolved to go straight at 
it. “I know for a fact that he would 
like to marry your daughter, and I think 
that Sheila, without knowing it herself 
almost, is well inclined toward him.” 

The old man started up from his chair : 
“Eh? what! my Sheila?” 

“Yes, papa,” said the girl, turning 
round at once. 


She caught sight of a strange look on 
his face, and in an instant was by his 
side: “Papa, what is the matter with 
you ?” 

“Nothing, Sheila, nothing,” he said 
impatiently. “I am a little tired of the 
music, that is all. But go on with the 
music. Go back to the piano, Sheila, 
and go on with the music, and Mr. In- 
gram and me, we will go outside for a 
little while.” 

Mackenzie walked out of the room, 
and said aloud in the hall, “Ay, are you 
coming, Mr. Ingram ? It iss a fine night 
this night, and the wind is in a very 
good way for the weather.” 

And then, as he went out to the front, 
he hummed aloud, so that Sheila should 
hear, 

Who goes there ? Stranger, quickly tell ! 

A friend ! The word ! Good-night ! All’s well ! 

All’s well ! Good-night ! All’s well ! 

Ingram followed the old man outside, 
with a somewhat guilty conscience sug- 
gesting odd things to him. Would it 
not be possible now to shut one’s ears 
for the next half hour ? Angry words 
were only little perturbations in the air. 
If you shut your ears till they were all 
over, what harm could be done ? All 
the big facts of life would remain the 
same. The sea, the sky, the hills, the 
human beings around you, even your 
desire of sleep for the night and your 
wholesorhe longing for breakfast in the 
morning, would all remain, and the 
angry words would have passed away. 
But perhaps it was a proper punishment 
that he should now go out and bear all 
the wrath of this fierce old gentleman, 
whose daughter he had conspired to 
carry off. Mackenzie was walking up 
and down the path outside in the cool 
and silent night. There was not much 
moon now, but a clear and lambent twi- 
light showed all the familiar features of 
Loch Roag and the southern hills, and 
down there in the bay you could vague- 
ly make out the Maighdean-mhara rock- 
ing in the tiny waves that washed in on 
the white shore. Ingram had never 
looked on this pretty picture with a less 
feeling of delight. 

“Well, you see, Mr. Mackenzie,” he 


74 


A PRINCESS OP THULE . 


was beginning, “you must make this 
excuse for him — ” 

But Mackenzie put aside Lavender at 
once. It was all about Sheila that he 
wanted to know. There was no anger 
in his words ; only a great anxiety, and 
sometimes an extraordinary and pathetic 
effort to take a philosophical view of the 
situation. What had Sheila said ? Was 
Sheila deeply interested in the young 
man ? Would it please Sheila if he was 
to go in-doors and give at once his free 
consent to her marrying this Mr. Lav- 
ender ? 

“Oh, you must not think,” said Mac- 
kenzie, with a certain loftiness of air 
even amidst his great perturbation and 
anxiety — “ you must not think I hef not 
foreseen all this. It wass some day or 
other Sheila will be sure to marry; and 
although I did not expect — no, I did not 
expect that — that she would marry a 
stranger and an Englishman, if it will 
please her that is enough. You cannot 
tell a young lass the one she should 
marry : it iss all a chance the one she 
likes, and if she does not marry him it 
is better she will not marry at all. Oh 
yes, I know that ferry well. And I hef 
known there wass a time coming when 
I would give away my Sheila to some 
young man ; and there iss no use com- 
plaining of it. But you hef not told me 
much about this young man, or I hef 
forgotten : it is the same thing Whatever. 
He has not much money, you said — he 
is waiting for some money. Well, this 
is what I will do : I will give him all my 
money if he will come and live in the 
Lewis.” 

All the philosophy he had been mus- 
tering up fell away from that last sen- 
tence. It was like the cry of a drown- 
ing man who sees the last life-boat set 
out for shore, leaving him to his fate. 
And Ingram had not a word to say in 
reply to that piteous entreaty. 

“I do not ask him to stop in Borva : 
no, it iss a small place for one that hass 
lived in a town. But the Lewis, that is 
quite different ; and there iss ferry good 
houses in Stornoway.” 

“But surely, sir,” said Ingram, “you 
need not consider all this just yet. I 


am sure neither of them has thought of 
any such thing.” 

“No,” said Mackenzie, recovering 
himself, “perhaps not. But we hef our 
duties to look at the future of young 
folks. And you will say that Mr. Lav- 
ender hass only expectations of money ?” 

“ Well, the expectation is almost a cer- 
tainty. His aunt, I have told you, is a 
very rich old lady, who has no other near 
relations, and she is exceedingly fond of 
him, and would do anything for him. I 
am sure the allowance he has now is 
greatly in excess of what she spends on 
herself.” 

“ But they might quarrel, you know — 
they might quarrel. You hef always to 
look to the future : they might quarrel, 
and what will he do then ?” 

“Why, you don’t suppose he couldn’t 
support himself if the worst were to come 
to the worst ? He is an amazingly clever 
fellow — ” 

“Ay, that is very good,” said Mac- 
kenzie in a cautious sort of way, “but 
has he ever made any money ?” 

“Oh, I fancy not — nothing to speak 
of. He has sold some pictures, but I 
think he has given more away.” 

“Then it iss not easy, tek my word 
for it, Mr. Ingram, to begin a new trade 
if you are twenty-five years of age ; and 
the people who will tek your pictures for 
nothing, will they pay for them if you 
wanted the money ?” 

It was obviously the old man’s eager 
wish to prove to himself that, somehow 
or other, Lavender might come to have 
no money, and be made dependent on 
his father-in-law. So far, indeed, from 
sharing the sentiments ordinarily attrib- 
uted to that important relative, he would 
have welcomed with a heartfelt joy the 
information that the man who, as he ex- 
pected, was about to marry his daugh- 
ter was absolutely penniless. Not even 
all the attractions of that deer forest 
in Sutherlandshire — particularly fasci- 
nating as they must have been to a man 
of his education and surroundings — had 
been able to lead the old King of Borva 
even into hinting to his daughter that 
the owner of that property would like to 
marry her. Sheila was to choose for 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


75 


herself. She was not like a fisherman’s 
lass, bound to consider ways and means. 
And now that she had chosen, or at least 
indicated the possibility of her doing so, 
her father’s chief desire was that his fu- 
ture son-in-law should come and take 
and enjoy his money, so only that Sheila 
might not be carried away from him for 
ever. 

“Well, I will see about it,” said Mac- 
kenzie with an affectation of cheerful 
and practical shrewdness. “Oh yes, 1 
will see about it when Sheila has made 
up her mind. He is a very good young 
man, whatever — ” 

“ He is the best-hearted fellow I know,” 
said Ingram warmly. “I don’t think 
Sheila has much to fear if she marries 
him. If you had known him as long as 
I have, you would know how consider- 
ate he is to everybody about him, how 
generous he is, how good-natured and 
cheerful, and so forth : in short, he is a 
thorough good fellow, that’s what I have 
to say about him.” 

“ It iss well for him he will hef such a 
champion,” said Mackenzie with a smile : 
“ there is not many Sheila will pay at- 
tention to as she does to you.” 

They went in -doors again, Ingram 
scarcely knowing how he had got so 
easily through the ordeal, but very glad 
it was over. 

Sheila was still at the piano, and on 
their entering she said, “Papa, here is a 
song you must learn to sing with me.” 

“And what iss it, Sheila?” he said, 
going over to her. 

‘“Time has not thinned my flowing 
hair.’ ” 

He put his hand on her head and 
said, “ I hope it will be a long time be- 
fore he will thin your hair, Sheila.” 

The girl looked up surprised. Scotch 
folks are, as a rule, somewhat reticent 
in their display of affection, and it was 
not often that her father talked to her 
in that way. What was there in his 
face that made her glance instinctively 
toward Ingram. Somehow or other her 
hand sought her father’s hand, and she 
rose and went away from the piano, with 
her head bent down and tears beginning 
to tell in her eyes. 


“Yes, that is a capital song,” said 
Ingram loudly. Sing ‘The Arethusa,’ 
Lavender — ‘ Said the saucy Arethusa.’ ” 

Lavender, knowing what had taken 
place, and not daring to follow with his 
eyes Sheila and her father, who had 
gone to the other end of the room, sang 
the song. Never was a gallant and 
devil-may-care sea- song sung so hope- 
lessly without spirit. But the piano made 
a noise and the verses took up time. 
When he had finished he almost feared 
to turn round, and yet there was nothing 
dreadful in the picture that presented 
itself. Sheila was sitting on her father’s 
knee, with her head buried in his bosom, 
while he was patting her head and talk- 
ing in a low voice to her. The King of 
Borva did not look particularly fierce. 

“ Yes, it iss a teffle of a good song,” he 
said suddenly. “Now get up, Sheila, 
and go and tell Mairi we will have a bit 
of bread and cheese before going to bed. 
And there will be a little hot water want- 
ed in the other room, for this room it iss 
too full of the smoke.” 

Sheila, as she went out of the room, 
had her head cast down and perhaps 
an extra tinge of color in her young 
and pretty face. But surely,* Lavender 
thought to himself as he watched her 
anxiously, she did not look grieved. As 
for her father, what should he do now ? 
Turn suddenly round and beg Macken- 
zie’s pardon, and throw himself on his 
generosity ? When he did, with much 
inward trembling, venture to approach 
the old man, he found no such explana- 
tion possible. The King of Borva was 
in one of his grandest moods — dignified, 
courteous, cautious, and yet inclined to 
treat everybody and everything with a 
sort of lofty good-humor. He spoke to 
Lavender in the most friendly way, but 
it was about the singular and startling 
fact that modern research had proved 
many of the Roman legends to be ut- 
terly untrustworthy. Mr. Mackenzie 
observed that the man was wanting in 
proper courage who feared to accept the 
results of such inquiries. It was better 
that we should know the truth, and then 
the kings who had really made Rome 
great might emerge from the fog of tra- 


76 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


dition in their proper shape. There was 
something quite sympathetic in the way 
he talked of those ill-treated sovereigns, 
whom the vulgar mind had clothed in 
mist. 

Lavender was sorely beset by the rival 
claims of Rome and Borva upon his at- 
tention. He was inwardly inclined to 
curse Numa Pompilius — which would 
have been ineffectual — when he found 
that personage interfering with a wild 
effort to discover why Mackenzie should 
treat him in this way. And then it oc- 
curred to him that, as he had never said 
a word to Mackenzie about this affair, it 
was too much to expect that Sheila’s 
father should himself open the subject. 
On the contrary, Mackenzie was bent 
on extending a grave courtesy to his 
guest, so that the latter should not feel 
ill at ease until it suited himself to make 
any explanations he might choose. It 
was not Mackenzie’s business to ask this 
young man if he wanted to marry Sheila. 
No. The king’s daughter, if she were 
to be won at all, was to be won by a 
suitor, and it was not for her father to 
be in a hurry about it. So Lavender got 
back into the region of early Roman 
history, and tried to recall what he had 
learned in Livy, and quite coincided 
with everything that Niebuhr had said 
or proved, and with everything that 
Mackenzie thought Niebuhr had said 
or proved. He was only too glad, in- 
deed, to find himself talking to Sheila’s 
father in this friendly fashion. 

Then Sheila came in and told them 
that supper was laid in the adjoining 
room. At that modest meal a great 
good-humor prevailed. Sometimes, it 
is true, it occurred to Ingram that Sheila 
occasionally cast an anxious glance to 
her father, as if she were trying to dis- 
cover whether he was really satisfied, or 
whether he were not merely pretending 
satisfaction to please her; but for the 
rest the party was a most friendly and 
merry one. Lavender, naturally enough, 
was in the highest of spirits, and nothing 
could exceed the lighthearted endeavors 
he made to amuse and interest and cheer 
his companions. Sheila, indeed, sat up 
later than usual, even although pipes 


were lit again, and the slate-gray silk 
likely to bear witness to the fact in the 
morning. How comfortable and home- 
ly was this sort of life in the remote 
stone building overlooking the sea ! He 
began to think that he could live always 
in Borva if only Sheila were with him 
as his companion. 

Was it an actual fact, then, he asked 
himself next morning, that he stood con- 
fessed to the small world of Borva as 
Sheila’s accepted lover ? Not a word on 
the subject had passed between Macken- 
zie and himself, and yet he found him- 
self assuming the position of a younger 
relative, and rather expecting advice 
from the old man. He began to take a 
great interest, too, in the local adminis- 
tration of the island : he examined the 
window-fastenings of Mackenzie’s house 
and saw that they would be useful in the 
winter, and expressed to Sheila’s father 
his confidential opinion that the girl 
should not be allowed to go out in the 
Maighdean-mhara without Duncan. 

“She will know as much about boats 
as Duncan himself,” said her father with 
a smile. “But Sheila will not go out 
when the rough weather begins.” 

“Of course you keep her in-doors 
then,” said the younger man, already 
assuming some little charge over Sheila’s 
comfort. 

The father laughed aloud at this sim- 
plicity on the part of the Englishman : 
“If we wass to keep in-doors in the bad 
weather, it would be all the winter we 
would be in-doors ! There iss no day at 
all Sheila will not be out some time or 
other ; and she is never so well as in 
the hard weather, when she will be out 
always in the snow and the frost, and 
hef plenty of exercise and amusement.” 

“She is not often ailing, I suppose?” 
said Lavender. 

“She is as strong as a young pony, 
that is what Sheila is,” said her father 
proudly. “And there is no one in the 
island will run so fast, or walk so long 
without tiring, or carry things from the 
shore as she will — not one.” 

But here he suddenly checked himself. 
“That is,” he said with some little ex- 
pression of annoyance, “ I wass saying 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


77 


Sheila could do that if it wass any use ; 
but she will not do such things, like a 
fisherman’s lass that hass to keep in the 
work.” 

‘‘Oh, of course not,” said Lavender 
hastily. ‘‘But still, you know, it is 
pleasant to know she is so strong and 
well.” 

And at this moment Sheila herself ap- 
peared, accompanied by her great deer- 
hound, and testifying by the bright color 
in her face to the assurances of her health 
her father had been giving. She had 
just come up and over the hill from Bor- 
vabost, while as yet breakfast had not 
been served. Somehow or other, Lav- 
ender fancied she never looked so bright 
and bold and handsome as in the early 
morning, with the fresh sea-air tingling 
the color in her cheeks, and the sunlight 
shining in the clear eyes or giving from 
time to time a glimpse of her perfect 
teeth. But this morning she did not 
seem quite so frankly merry as usual. 
She patted the deerhound’s head, and 
rather kept her eyes away from her 
father and his companion. And then 
she took Bras away to give him his 
breakfast, just as Ingram appeared to 
bid her good-morning and ask her what 
she meant by being about so early. 

How anxiously Lavender now began 
to calculate on the remaining days of 
their stay in Borva ! They seemed so 
few. He got up at preposterously early 
hours to make each day as long as pos- 
sible, but it slipped away with a fatal 
speed ; and already he began to think 
of Stornoway and the Clansman and 
his bidding*good-bye to Sheila. He had 
said no more to her of any pledge as 
regarded the future. He was content to 
see that she was pleased to be with him ; 
and happy indeed were their rambles 
about the island, their excursions in 
Sheila’s boat, their visits to the White 
Water 4 in search of salmon. Nor had 
he yet spoken to Sheila’s father. He 
knew that Mackenzie knew, and both 
seemed to take it for granted that no 
good could come of a formal explanation 
until Sheila herself should make her 
wishes known. That, indeed, was the 
only aspect of the case that apparently 


presented itself to the old King of Borva. 
He forgot altogether those precautions 
and investigations which are supposed 
to occupy the mind of a future father-in- 
law, and only sought to see how Sheila 
was affected toward the young man who 
was soon about to leave the island. 
When he saw her pleased to be walking 
with Lavender and talking with him of 
an evening, he was pleased, and would 
rather have a cold dinner than break in 
upon them to hurry them home. When 
he saw her disappointed because Laven- 
der had been unfortunate in his salmon- 
fishing, he was ready to swear at Dun- 
can for not having had the fish in a bet- 
ter temper. And the most of his con- 
versation with Ingram consisted of an 
endeavor to convince himself that, after 
all, what had happened was for the best, 
and that Sheila seemed to be happy. 

But somehow or other, when the time 
for their departure was drawing near, 
Mackenzie showed a strange desire that 
his guests should spend the last two days 
in Stornoway. When Lavender first 
heard this proposal he glanced toward 
Sheila, and his face showed clearly his 
disappointment. 

“But Sheila will go with us too,” said 
her father, replying to that unuttered 
protest in the most innocent fashion; 
and then Lavender’s face brightened 
again, and he said that nothing would 
give him greater pleasure than to spend 
two days in Stornoway. 

“And you must not think,” said Mac- 
kenzie anxiously, “ that it is one day or 
two days or a great many days will show 
you all the fine things about Stornoway. 
And if you were to live in Stornoway 
you would find very good acquaintances 
and friends there ; and in the autumn, 
when the shooting begins, there are 
many English who will come up, and 
there will be ferry great doings at the 
castle. And there is some gentlemen 
now at Grimersta whom you hef not 
seen, and they are ferry fine gentlemen ; 
and at Garra-na-hina there iss two more 
gentlemen for the salmon-fishing. Oh, 
there iss a great many fine people in 
the Lewis, and it iss not all as lonely as 
Borva.” 


7 ; 


4 PRINCESS OF THULE. 


“ If it is half as pleasant a place to 
live in as Borva, it will do,” said Laven- 
der, with a flush of enthusiasm in his 
face as he looked toward Sheila and 
saw her pleased and downcast eyes. 

‘‘But it iss not to be compared,” said 
Mackenzie eagerly. ‘‘Borva, that is 
nothing at all ; but the Lewis, it is a 
ferry different thing to live in the Lewis ; 
and many English gentlemen hef told 
me they would like to live always in the 
Lewis.” 

“I think I should too,” said Lavender 
lightly and carelessly, little thinking what 
importance the old man immediately and 
gladly put upon the admission. 

From that moment, Lavender, although 
unconscious of what had happened, had 
nothing to fear in the way of opposition 
from Sheila’s father. If he had there 
and then boldly asked Mackenzie for 
his daughter, the old man would have 
given his consent freely, and bade Lav- 
ender go to Sheila herself. 

And so they set sail, one pleasant 
forenoon, from Borvabost, and the light 
wind that ruffled the blue of Loch Roag 
gently filled the mainsail of the Maigh- 
dean-mhara as she lightly ran down the 
tortuous channel. 

“ I don’t like to go away from Borva,” 
said Lavender in a low voice to Sheila, 
‘‘but I might have been leaving the isl- 
and with greater regret, for, you know, 
I expect to be back soon.” 

“ We shall always be glad to see you,” 
said the girl ; and although he would 
rather have had her say “ I ” than “we,” 
there was something in the tone of her 
voice that contented him. 

At Garra-na-hina Mackenzie pointe’d 
out with a great interest to Lavender a 
tall man who was going down through 
some meadows to the Amhuinn Dhubh, 
“the Black River.” He had a long rod 
over his shoulder, and behind him, at 
some distance, followed a shorter man, 
who carried a gaff and landing-net. 
Mackenzie anxiously explained to Lav- 
ender that the tall figure was that of an 
Englishman. Lavender accepted the 
statement. But would he not go down 
to the river and make his acquaintance ? 
Lavender could not understand why he 


should be expected to take so great an 
interest in an ordinary English sports- 
man. 

“Ferry well,” said Mackenzie, a trifle 
disappointed, “but you would find sev- 
eral of the English in the Lewis if you 
wass living here.” 

These last two days in Stornoway were 
very pleasant. On their previous visit 
to the town Mackenzie had given up 
much of his time to business affairs, and 
was a good deal away from his guests, 
but now he devoted himself to making 
them particularly comfortable in the 
place and amusing them in every pos- 
sible way. He introduced Lavender, 
in especial, to all his friends there, and 
was most anxious to impress on the 
young man that life in Stornoway was, 
on the whole, rather a brilliant affair. 
Then was there a finer point from which 
you could start at will for Inverness, 
Oban and such great centres of civiliza- 
tion ? Very soon there would even be 
a telegraphic cable laid to the mainland. 
Was Mr. Lavender aware that frequent- 
ly you could see the Sutherlandshire hills 
from this very town of Stornoway ? 

There Sheila laughed, and Lavender, 
who kept watching her face always to 
read all her fancies and sentiments and 
wishes in the shifting lights of it, immedi- 
ately demanded an explanation. 

“ It is no good thing,” said Sheila, “to 
see the Sutherland hills often, for when 
you see them it means to rain.” 

But Lavender had not been taught to 
fear the rain of the Western Isles. The 
very weather seemed to have conspired 
with Mackenzie to charm the young man 
with the island. At this moment, for ex- 
ample, they were driving away from Stor- 
noway along the side of the great bay 
that stretches northward until it finds its 
furthest promontory in Tiumpan Head. 
What magnificence of color shone all 
around them in the hot sunlight ! Where 
the ruffled blue sea came near the long 
sweep of yellow sand it grew to be a 
bright, transparent green. The splendid 
curve of the bay showed a gleaming line 
of white where the waves broke in masses 
of hissing foam ; and beyond that curve 
again long promontories of dark red con- 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


79 


glomerate ran out into the darker waters 
of the sea, with their summits shining 
with the bright sea-grass. Here, close at 
hand, were warm meadows, with calves 
and lambs cropping the sweet-scented 
Dutch clover. A few huts, shaped like 
beehives, stood by the roadside, close by 
some deep peat cuttings. There was a 
cutting in the yellow sand of the bay for 
the pulling up of captured whales. Now 
and again you could see a solan dart 
down from the blue heavens into the 
blue of the sea, sending up a spurt of 
water twenty feet high as he disappear- 
ed ; and far out there, between the red 
precipices and the ruffled waters beneath, 
white sea-fowl flew from crag to crag or 
dropped down upon the sea to rise and 
fall with the waves. 

At the small hamlet of Gress they got 
a large rowing-boat manned by sturdy 
fishermen, and set out to explore the 
great caves formed in the mighty wall 
of conglomerate that here fronts the sea. 
The wild-fowl flew about them, scream- 
ing and yelling at being disturbed. The 
long swell of the sea lifted the boat, pass- 
ed from under it, and went on with ma- 
jestic force to crash on the glowing red 
crags and send jets of foam flying up 
the face of them. They captured one 
of the sea-birds — a young thing about 
as big as a hen, with staring eyes, scant 
feathers, and a long beak with which it 
instinctively tried to bite its enemies — 
and the parents of it kept swooping 
down over the boat, uttering shrill cries, 
until their offspring was restored to the 
surface of the water. They went into 
the great loud-sounding caverns, getting 
a new impression of the extraordinary 
clearness of the sea-water by the depth at 
which the bottom was visible ; and here 
their shouts occasionally called up from 
some dim twilight recess, far in among 
the perilous rocks, the head of a young 
seal, which would instantly dive again 
and be seen no more. They watched 
the salmon splash in the shallower creeks 
where the sea had scooped out a tiny 
bay of ruddy sand, and then a slowly 
rolling porpoise would show his black 
back above the water and silently dis- 
appear again. All this was pleasant 
6 


enough on a pleasant morning, in fresh 
sea-air and sunlight, in holiday -time ; 
and was there any reason, Mackenzie 
may fairly have thought, why this young 
man, if he did marry Sheila, should not 
come and live in a place where so much 
healthy amusement was to be found ? 

And in the evening, too, when they 
had climbed to the top of the hills on the 
south of Stornoway harbor, did not the 
little town look sufficiently picturesque, 
with its white houses, its shipping, its 
great castle and plantations lying in 
shadow under the green of the eastern 
sky? Then away to the west what a 
strange picture presented itself ! Thick 
bands of gray cloud lay across the sky, 
and the sunlight from behind them sent 
down great rays of misty yellow on the 
endless miles of moor. But how was it 
that, as these shafts of sunlight struck on 
the far and successive ridges of the moor- 
land, each long undulation seemed to 
become transparent, and all the island 
appeared to consist of great golden- 
brown shells heaped up behind each 
other, with the sunlight shining through ? 

“ I have tried a good many new effects 
since coming up here,” said Lavender, 
‘‘but I shall not try that." 

“Oh, it is? nothing — it is nothing at 
all,” said Mackenzie with a studied air 
of unconcern. “There iss much more 
beautiful things than that in the island, 
but you will hef need of a ferry long 
time before you will find it all out. That 
— that iss nothing at all.” 

“You will perhaps make a picture of 
it some other time,” said Sheila with her 
eyes cast down, and as he was standing 
by her at the time, he took her hand 
and pressed it, and said, “ I hope so.” 

Then, that night ! Did not every hour 
produce some new and wonderful scene, 
or was it only that each minute grew to 
be so precious, and that the enchant- 
ment of Sheila’s presence filled the air 
around him ? There was no moon, but 
the stars shone over the bay and the 
harbor and the dusky hills beyond the 
castle. Every few seconds the light- 
house at Amish Point sent out its wild 
glare of orange fire into the heart of 
the clear darkness, and then as sudden- 


8o 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


ly faded out and left the eyes too bewil- 
dered to make out the configuration of 
the rocks. All over the north-west there 
still remained the pale glow of the twi- 
light, and somehow Lavender seemed to 
think that that strange glow belonged to 
Sheila’s home in the west, and that the 
people in Stornoway knew nothing of 
the wonders of Loch Roag and of the 
strange nights there. Was he likely 
ever to forget ? 

“Good-bye,. Sheila,” he said next 
morning, when the last signal had been 
given and the Clansman was about to 
move from her moorings. 

She had bidden good-bye to Ingram 
already, but somehow she could not 
speak to his companion just at this last 
moment. She pressed his hand and 
turned away, and went ashore with her 
father. Then the big steamer throbbed 
its way out of the harbor, and by and by 
the island of Lewis lay but as a thin 
blue cloud along the horizon ; and who 
could tell that human beings, with 
strange hopes and fancies and griefs, 
were hidden away in that pale line of 
vapor ? 


CHAPTER IX. 

“ FAREWELL, MACKRIMMON !” 

A night journey from Greenock to 
London is a sufficiently prosaic affair in 
ordinary circumstances, but it need not 
be always so. What if a young man, 
apparently occupied in making himself 
comfortable and in talking nonsense to 
his friend and companion, should be se- 
cretly calculating how the journey could 
be made most pleasant to a bride, and 
that bride his bride? Lavender made 
experiments with regard to the ways 
and tempers of guards; he borrowed 
planks of wood with which to make 
sleeping - couches of an ordinary first- 
class carriage ; he bribed a certain of- 
ficial to have the compartment secured ; 
he took note of the time when, and the 
place where, refreshments could be pro- 
cured : all these things he did, thinking 
of Sheila. And when Ingram, some- 
times surprised by his good-nature, and 
occasionally remonstrating against his 


extravagance, at last fell asleep on the 
more or less comfortable cushions stretch- 
ed across the planks, Lavender would 
have him wake up again, that he might 
be induced to talk once more about 
Sheila. Ingram would make use of 
some wicked words, rub his eyes, ask 
what was the last station they had pass- 
ed, and then begin to preach to Laven- 
der about the great obligations he was 
under to Sheila, and what would be ex- 
pected of him in after times. 

“ You are coming away just now,” he 
would say, while Lavender, who could 
not sleep at all, was only anxious that 
Sheila’s name should be mentioned, “ en- 
riched with a greater treasure than falls 
to the lot of most men. If you know 
how to value that treasure, there is not 
a king or emperor in Europe who should 
not envy you.” 

“ But don’t you think I value it ?” the 
other would say anxiously. 

“We’ll see about that afterward, by 
what you do. But in the mean time you 
don’t know what you have won. You 
don’t know the magnificent single-heart- 
edness of that girl, her keen sense of 
honor, nor the strength of character, of 
judgment and decision that lies beneath 
her apparent simplicity. Why, I have 
known Sheila, now — But what’s the 
use of talking ?” 

“ I wish you would talk, though, In T 
gram,” said his companion quite sub- 
missively. “ You have known her longer 
than I. I am willing to believe all you 
say of her, and anxious, indeed, to know 
as much about her as possible. You 
don’t suppose I fancy she is anything 
less than you say ?” 

“Well,” said Ingram doubtfully, “per- 
haps not. The worst of it is, that you 
take such odd readings of people. H ow- 
ever, when you marry her, as I now 
hope you may, you will soon find out ; 
and then, if you are not grateful, if you 
don’t understand and appreciate then 
the fine qualities of this girl, the sooner 
you put a millstone round your neck and 
drop over Chelsea Bridge the better.” 

“ She will always have in you a good 
friend to look after her when she comes 
to London.” 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


8l 


“Oh, don’t imagine I mean to thrust 
myself in at your breakfast-table to give 
you advice. If a husband and wife can- 
not manage their own affairs satisfac- 
torily, no third person can ; and I am 
getting to be an elderly man, who likes 
peace and comfort and his own quiet.” 

“ I wish you wouldn’t talk such non- 
sense !” said Lavender impetuously. 
“You know you are bound to marry; 
and the woman you ask to marry you 
will be a precious fool if she refuses. I 
don’t know, indeed, how you and Sheila 
ever escaped—” 

“Look here, Lavender,” said his com- 
panion, speaking in a somewhat more 
earnest fashion, “if you marry Sheila 
Mackenzie I suppose I may see some- 
thing of both of you from time to time. 
But you are naturally jealous and exact- 
ing, as is the way with many good fel- 
lows who have had too much of their 
own will in the world ; and if you start 
off with the notion now that Sheila and 
I might ever have married, or that such 
a thing was ever thought of by either of 
us, the certain consequence will be that 
you will become jealous of me, and that 
in time I shall have to stop seeing either 
of you if you happen to be living in 
London.” 

“And if ever the time comes,” said 
Lavender lightly, “when I prove myself 
•such a fool, I hope I shall remember that 
*-a millstone can be bought in Victoria 
road and that Chelsea Bridge is handy.” 

“All right : I’m going to sleep.” 

For some time after Ingram was per- 
mitted to rest in peace, and it was not 
until they had reached some big station 
or other toward morning that he woke. 
Lavender had never closed his eyes. 

“ Haven’t you been asleep ?” 

“No.” 

“What’s the matter now ?” 

“My aunt.” 

“You seem to have acquired a trick 
recently of looking at all the difficulties 
of your position at once. Why don’t you 
take them singly? You’ve just got rid 
of Mackenzie’s opposition : that might 
have contented you for a while.” 

“ I think the best plan will be to say 
nothing of this to my aunt at present. I 


think we ought to get married first, and 
when I take Sheila to see her as my wife, 
what can she say then ?” 

“ But what is Sheila likely to say before 
then ? And Sheila’s father? You must 
be out of your mind !” 

“There will be a pretty scene, then, 
when I tell her.” 

“Scenes don’t hurt anybody, unless 
when they end in brickbats or decanters. 
Your aunt must know you would marry 
some day.” 

“ Yes, but you know whom she wished 
me to marry.” 

“That is nothing. Every old lady 
has a fancy for imagining possible mar- 
riages ; but your aunt is a reasonable 
woman, and could not possibly object 
to your marrying a girl like Sheila ?” 

“Oh, couldn’t she? Then you don’t 
know her: ‘Frank, my dear, what are 
the arms borne by your wife’s family ?’ 

‘ My dear aunt, I will describe them to 
you as becomes a dutiful nephew. The 
arms are quarterly : first and fourth, 
vert, a herring, argent ; second and 
third, azure, a solan-goose, volant, or. 
The crest, out of a crown vallery, argent, 
a cask of whisky, gides. Supporters, 
dexter, a gillie ; sinister, a fisherman.’ ” 

“And a very good coat-of-arms, too. 
You might add the motto Ultimus regum. 
Or A tarns editus regibus. Or Tyrrhena 
regum progenies. To think that your 
aunt would forbid your wedding a king’s 
daughter!” 

“ I should wed the king’s daughter, 
aunt or no aunt, in any case ; but, you 
see, it would be uncommonly awkward, 
just as old Mackenzie would want to 
know something more particular about 
my circumstances ; and he might ask 
for references to the old lady herself, 
just as if I were a tenant about to take 
a house.” 

“ I have given him enough references. 
Go to sleep, and don’t bother your- 
self.” 

But now Ingram felt himself just as 
unable as his companion to escape into 
unconsciousness, and so he roused him- 
self thoroughly, and began to talk about 
Lewis and Borva and the Mackenzies, 
and the duties and responsibilities Lav- 


82 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


ender would undertake in marrying 
Sheila. 

“Mackenzie,” he said, “will expect 
you to live in Stornoway at least half 
the year, and it will be very hard on 
him if you don’t.” 

“Oh, as to that,” said the other, “I 
should have no objection ; but, you see, 
if I am to get married I really think I 
ought to try to get into some position of 
earning my own living or helping to- 
ward it, you know. I begin to see how 
galling this sort of dependence on my 
aunt might be if I wished to act for my- 
self. Now, if I were to begin to do any- 
thing, I could not go and bury myself 
in Lewis for half the year — just at first : 
by and by, you know, it might be dif- 
ferent. But don’t you think I ought to 
begin and do something ?” 

“Most certainly. I have often wished 
you had been born a carpenter or paint- 
er or glazier.” 

“People are not born carpenters or 
glaziers, but sometimes they are born 
painters. I think I have been born 
nothing ; but I am willing to try, more 
especially as I think Sheila would like 
it.” 

“ I know she would.” 

“ I will write and tell her the moment 
I get to London.” 

“I would fix first what your occupa- 
tion was to be, if I were you. There is 
no hurry about telling Sheila, although 
she will be very glad to get as much 
news of you as possible, and I hope you 
will spare no time or trouble in pleas- 
ing her in that line. By the way, what 
an infamous shame it was of you to go 
and gammon old Mackenzie into the 
belief that he can read poetry ! Why, 
he will make that girl’s life a burden to 
her. I heard him propose to read Par- 
adise Lost to her as soon as the rain set 
in.” 

“ I didn’t gammon him,” said Laven- 
der with a laugh. “Everyman thinks 
he can read poetry better than every 
other man, even as every man fancies 
that no one gets cigars as good and as 
cheap as he does, and that no one can 
drive a horse safely but himself. My 
talking about his reading was not as bad 


as Sheila’s persuading him that he can 
play whist. Did you ever know a man 
who did not believe that everybody else’s 
reading of poetry was affected, stilted 
and unbearable ? I know Mackenzie 
must have been reading poetry to Sheila 
long before I mentioned it to him.” 

“But that suggestion about his reso- 
nant voice and the Crystal Palace?” 

“That was a joke.” 

“He did not take it as a joke, and 
neither did Sheila.” 

“Well, Sheila would believe that her 
father could command the Channel fleet, 
or turn out the present ministry, or build 
a bridge to America, if only anybody 
hinted it to her. Touching that Crystal 
Palace : did you observe how little notion 
of size she could have got from pictures 
when she asked me if the Crystal Palace 
was much bigger than the hot-houses at 
Lewis Castle ?” 

“What a world of wonder the girl is 
coming into !” said the other meditative- 
ly. “ But it will be all lit up by one sun 
if only you take care of her and justify 
her belief in you.” 

“I have not much doubt,” said Lav- 
ender with a certain modest confidence 
in his manner which had repeatedly of 
late pleased his friend. 

Even Sheila herself could scarcely j 
have found London more strange than • 
did the two men who had just returned < 
from a month’s sojourn in the northern 
Hebrides. The dingy trees in Euston 
Square, the pale sunlight that shone 
down on the gray pavements, the noise \ 
of the omnibuses and carts, the multi- '< 
tude of strangers, the blue and mist-like 
smoke that hung about Tottenham Court 
road, — all were as strange to them as the j 
sensation of sitting in a hansom andbeing I 
driven along by an unseen driver. Lav- 
ender confessed afterward that he was 
pervaded by an odd sort of desire to 
know whether there was anybody in 
London at all like Sheila. Now and 
again a smartly-dressed girl passed along 
the pavement: what was it that made 
the difference between her and that other 
girl whom he had i ust left ? Yet he wish- < 
ed to have the difference as decided as 
possible. When some bright, fresh-col- 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


83 


ored, pleasant-looking girl passed, he was 
anxious to prove to himself that she was 
not to be compared with Sheila. Where 
in all Loridon could you find eyes that 
told so much? He forgot to place the 
specialty of Sheila’s eyes in the fact of 
their being a dark gray -blue under black 
eyelashes. What he did remember was 
that no eyes could possibly say the same 
things to him as they had said. And 
where in all London was the same sweet 
aspect to be found, or the same uncon- 
sciously proud and gentle demeanor, or 
the same tender friendliness expressed 
in a beautiful face ? He would not say 
anything against London women, for all 
that. It was no fault of theirs that they 
could not be sea-kings’ daughters, with 
the courage and frankness and sweetness 
of the sea gone into their blood. He 
was only too pleased to have proved to 
himself, by looking at some half dozen 
pretty shop-girls, that not in London was 
there any one to compare with Princess 
Sheila. 

For many a day thereafter Ingram 
had to suffer a good deal of this sort of 
lover’s logic, and bore it with great for- 
titude. Indeed, nothing pleased him 
more than to observe that Lavender’s 
affection, so far from waning, engrossed 
more and more of his thought and his 
time ; and he listened with unfailing 
good-nature and patience to the perpetual 
talk of his friend about Sheila and her 
home, and the future that might be in 
store for both of them. If he had ac- 
cepted half the invitations to dinner sent 
down to him at the Board of Trade by 
his friend, he would scarcely ever have 
been out of Lavender’s club. Many a 
long evening they passed in this way — 
either in Lavender’s rooms in King street 
or in Ingram’s lodgings in Sloane street. 
Ingram quite consented to lie in a chair 
and smoke, sometimes putting in a word 
of caution to bring Lavender back from 
the romantic Sheila to the real Sheila, 
sometimes smiling at some wild proposal 
or statement on the part of his friend, 
but always glad to see that the pretty 
idealisms planted during their stay in 
the far North were in*po danger of dying 
out down here in the South. Those were 


great days, too, when a letter arrived 
from Sheila. Nothing had been said 
about their corresponding, but Lavender 
had written shortly after his arrival in 
London, and Sheila had answered for 
her father and herself. It wanted but 
a very little amount of ingenuity to con- 
tinue the interchange of letters thus be- 
gun ; and when the well-known envelope 
arrived high holiday was immediately 
proclaimed by the recipient of it. He 
did not show Ingram these letters, of 
course, but the contents of them were 
soon bit by bit revealed. He was also 
permitted to see the envelope, as if 
Sheila’s handwriting had some magical 
charm about it. Sometimes, indeed, In- 
gram had himself a letter from Sheila, 
and that was immediately shown to Lav- 
ender. Was he pleased to find that these 
communications were excessively busi- 
ness-like — describing how the fishing 
was going on, what was doing in the 
schools, and how John the Piper was 
conducting himself, with talk about the 
projected telegraphic cable, the shooting 
in Harris, the health of Bras, and other 
esoteric matters ? 

Lavender’s communications with the 
King of Borva were of a different nature. 
Wonderful volumes on building, agri- 
culture and what not, tobacco hailing 
from certain royal sources in the neigh- 
borhood of the Pyramids, and now and 
again a new sort of rifle or some fresh 
invention in fishing-tackle, — these were 
the sort of things that found their way to 
Lewis. And then in reply came haunches 
of venison, and kegs of rare whisky, and 
skins of wild animals, which, all very 
admirable in their way, were a trifle 
cumbersome in a couple of moderate 
rooms in King street, St. James’s. But 
here Lavender hit upon a happy device. 
He had long ago talked to his aunt of 
the mysterious potentate in the far North, 
who was the ruler of man, beast and fish, 
and who had an only daughter. When 
these presents arrived, Mrs. Lavender 
was informed that they were meant for 
her, and was given to understand that 
they were the propitiatory gifts of a half- 
savage monarch who wished to seek her 
friendship. In vain did Ingram warn 


8 4 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


Lavender of the possible danger of this 
foolish joke. The young man laughed, 
and would come down to Sloane street 
with«nother story of his success as an 
envoy of the distant king. 

And so the months went slowly by, and 
Lavender raved about Sheila, and dream- 
ed about Sheila, and was always going 
to begin some splendid achievement for 
Sheila’s sake, but never just managed to 
begin. After all, the future did not look 
very terrible, and the present was satis- 
factory enough. Mrs. Lavender had no 
objection whatever to listening to his 
praises of Sheila, and had even gone 
the length of approving of the girl’s pho- 
tograph when it was shown her. But at 
the end of six months Lavender sud- 
denly went down to Sloane street, found 
Ingram in his lodgings, and said, “ In- 
gram, I start for Lewis to-morrow.” 

‘‘The more fool you!” was the com- 
placent reply. 

“ I can’t bear this any longer : I must 
go and see her.” 

‘‘You’ll have to bear worse if you go. 
You don’t know what getting to Lewis 
is in the winter. You’ll be killed with 
cold before you see the Minch.” 

“ I can stand a good bit of cold when 
there’s a reason for it,” said the young 
man; “and I have written to Sheila to 
say I should start to-morrow.” 

“ In that case I had better make use 
of you. I suppose you won’t mind 
taking up to Sheila a sealskin jacket 
that I have bought for her.” 

“ That you have bought for her !” said 
the other. 

How could he have spared fifteen 
pounds out of his narrow income for 
such a present ? And yet he laughed at 
the idea of his ever having been in love 
with Sheila. 

Lavender took the sealskin jacket with 
him, and started on his journey to the 
North. It was certainly all that Ingram 
had prophesied in the way of discomfort, 
hardship and delay. But one forenoon, 
Lavender, coming up from the cabin of 
the steamer into which he had descend- 
ed to escape from the bitter wind and 
the sleet, saw before him a strange thing. 
In the middle of the black sea and under 


a dark gray sky lay a long wonder-land 
of gleaming snow. Far as the eye could 
see the successive headlands of pale white 
jutted out into the dark ocean, until in 
the south they faded into a gray mist and 
became invisible. And when they got 
into Stornoway harbor, how black seem- 
ed the waters of the little bay and the 
hulls of the boats and the windows of 
the houses against the blinding white of 
the encircling hills ! 

“Yes,” said Lavender to the captain, 
“it will be a cold drive across to Loch 
Roag. I shall give Mackenzie’s man a 
good dram before we start.” 

But it was not Mackenzie’s notion of 
hospitality to send Duncan to meet an 
honored guest, and ere the vessel was 
fast moored Lavender had caught sight 
of the well-known pair of horses and the 
brown wagonette, and Mackenzie stamp- 
ing up and down in the trampled snow. 
And this figure close down to the edge 
of the quay ? Surely, there was some- 
thing about the thick gray shawl, the 
white feather, the set of the head, that 
he knew ! 

“Why, Sheila!” he cried, jumping 
ashore before the gangway was shoved 
across, “whatever made you come to 
Stornoway on such a day ?” 

“And it is not much my coming to 
Stornoway if you will come all the way 
from England to the Lewis,” said Sheila, j 
looking up with her bright and glad 
eyes. 

For six months he had been trying to 
recall the tones of her voice in looking I 
at her picture, and had failed : now he 
fancied that she spoke more sweetly and 
musically than ever. 

“Ay, ay,” said Mackenzie when he 
had shaken hands with the young man, ! 
“it wass a piece of foolishness, her com-? 
ing over to meet you in Styornoway ; ; 
but the girl will be neither to hold nor 
to bind when she teks a foolishness into 
her head.” 

“Is this the character I hear of you, 
Sheila ?” he said ; and Mackenzie laugh- 
ed at his daughter’s embarrassment, and 
said she was a good lass for all that, and 
bundled both the young folks into the 
inn, where luncheon had been provided, 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


85 


with a blazing fire in the room, and a 
kettle of hot water steaming beside it. 

When they got to Borva, Lavender 
began to see that Mackenzie had laid 
the most subtle plans for reconciling 
him to the hard weather of these north- 
ern winters ; and the young man, noth- 
ing loath, fell into his ways, and was 
astonished at the amusement and inter- 
est that could be got out of a residence 
in this bleak island at such a season. 
Mackenzie discarded at once the feeble 
protections against cold and wet which 
his guest had brought with him. He 
gave him a pair of his own knickerbock- 
ers and enormous boots ; he made him 
wear a frieze coat borrowed from Dun- 
can ; he insisted on his turning down 
the flap of a sealskin cap and tying the 
ends under his chin ; and thus equipped 
they started on many a rare expedition 
round the coast. But on their first go- 
ing out, Mackenzie, looking at him, said 
with some chagrin, “Will they wear 
gloves when they go shooting in your 
country ?” 

“Oh,” said Lavender, “these are only 
a pair of old dogskins I use chiefly to 
keep my hands clean. You see I have 
cut out the trigger-finger. And they 
keep your hands from being numbed, 
you know, with the cold or the rain.” 

“There will be not much need of that 
after a little while,” said Mackenzie; 
and indeed, after half an hour’s tramp- 
ing over snow and climbing over rocks, 
Lavender was well inclined to please 
the old man by tossing the gloves into 
the sea, for his hands were burning with 
heat. 

Then the pleasant evenings after all 
the fatigues of the day were over, clothes 
changed, dinner despatched, and Sheila 
at the open piano in that warm little 
drawing-room, with its strange shells 
and fish and birds ! 

Love in thine eyes for ever plays ; 

He in thy snowy bosom strays, 

they sang, just as in the bygone times of 
summer ; and now old Mackenzie had 
got on a bit farther in his musical studies, 
and could hum with the best of them, 

He makes thy rosy lips his care. 

And walks the mazes of thy hair. 


There was no winter at all in the snug 
little room, with its crimson fire and 
closed shutters and songs of happier 
times. “When the rosy morn appear- 
ing” had nothing inappropriate in it; 
and if they particularly studied the words 
of “Oh wert thou in the cauld blast,” it 
was only that Sheila might teach her 
companion the Scotch pronunciation, as 
far as she knew it. And once, half in 
joke, Lavender said he could believe it 
was summer again if Sheila had only on 
her slate-gray silk dress, with the red 
ribbon round her neck ; and sure enough, 
after dinner she came down in that dress, 
and Lavender took her hand and kissed 
it in gratitude. Just at that moment, too, 
Mackenzie began to swear at Duncan for 
not having brought him his pipe, ,and 
not only went out of the room to look 
for it, but was a full half hour in finding 
it. When he came in again he was 
singing carelessly, 

Love in thine eyes for ever plays, 

just as if he had got his pipe round the 
corner. 

For it had been all explained by this 
time, you know, and Sheila had in a 
couple of trembling words pledged away 
her life, and her father had given his 
consent. More than that he would have 
done for the'girl, if need were ; and when 
he saw the perfect happiness shining in 
her eyes — when he saw that, through 
some vague feelings of compunction or 
gratitude, or even exuberant joy, she was 
more than usually affectionate toward 
himself — he grew reconciled to the ways 
of Providence, and was ready to believe 
that Ingram had done them all a good 
turn in bringing his friend from the South 
with him. If there was any haunting 
fear at all, it was about the possibility of 
Sheila’s husband refusing to live in Stor- 
noway, even for half the year or a portion 
of the year ; but did not the young man 
express himself as delighted beyond 
measure with Lewis and the Lewis peo- 
ple, and the sports and scenery and 
climate of the island? If Mackenzie 
could have bought fine weather at twen- 
ty pounds a day, Lavender would have 
gone back to London with the conviction 


86 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


that there was only one thing better than 
Lewis in summer-time, and that was 
Lewis in time of snow and frost. 

Th®»blow fell. One evening a distinct 
thaw set in, during the night the wind 
went round to the south-west, and in the 
morning, lo ! the very desolation of deso- 
lation. Suainabhal, Mealasabhal, Cra- 
cabhal were all hidden away behind 
dreary folds of mist ; a slow and steady 
rain poured down from the lowering 
skies on the wet rocks, the marshy pas- 
ture-land and the leafless bushes; the 
Atlantic lay dark under a gray fog, 
and you could scarcely see across the 
loch in front of the house. Sometimes 
the wind freshened a bit, and howled 
about the house or dashed showers 
against the streaming panes ; but ordi- 
narily there was no sound but the cease- 
less hissing of the rain on the wet gravel 
at the door and the rush of the waves 
along the black rocks. All signs of life 
seemed to have fled from the earth and 
the sky. Bird and beast had alike taken 
shelter, and not even a gull or a sea-pye 
crossed the melancholy lines of moor- 
land, which were half obscured by the 
mist of the rain. 

“ Well, it can’t be fine weather always,” 
said Lavender cheerfully when Macken- 
zie was affecting to be greatly surprised 
to find such a thing as rain in the island 
of Lewis. 

“No, that iss quite true,” said the old 
man. “ It wass ferry good weather we 
were having since you hef come here. 
And what iss a little rain ? — oh, nothing: 
at all. You will see it will go away 
whenever the wind goes round.” 

With that Mackenzie would again go 
out to the front of the house, take a turn 
up and down the wet gravel, and pretend 
to be scanning the horizon for signs of a 
change. Sheila, a good deal more hon- 
est, went about her household duties, 
saying merely to Lavender, “I am very 
sorry the weather has broken, but it may 
clear before you go away from Borva.” 

“ Before I go ? Do you expect it to 
rain for a week ?” 

“ Perhaps it will not, but it is looking 
very bad to-day,” said Sheila. 

“Well, I don’t care,” said the young 


man, “though it should rain the skies 
down, if only you would keep in-doors, 
Sheila. But you do go out in such a 
reckless fashion. You don’t seem to re- 
flect that it is raining.” 

“I do not get wet,” she said. 

“Why, when you came up from the 
shore half an hour ago your hair was as 
wet as possible, and your face all red 
and gleaming with the rain.” 

“But I am none the worse. And I 
am not wet now. It is impossible that 
you will always keep in a room if you 
have things to do ; and a little rain does 
not hurt any one.” 

“ It occurs to me, Sheila,” he observed 
slowly, “ that you are an exceedingly ob- 
stinate and self-willed young person, 
and that no one has ever exercised any 
proper control over you.” 

She looked up for a moment with a 
sudden glance of surprise and pain : 
then she saw in his eyes that he meant 
nothing, and she went forward to him, 
putting her hand in his hand, and say- 
ing with a smile, “ I am very willing to 
be controlled.” 

“Are you really ?” 

“Yes.” 

“Then hear my commands. You 
shall not go out in time of rain without 
putting something over your head or 
taking an umbrella. You shall not go 
out in the Maighdean-mhara without 
taking some one with you besides Mairi. 
You shall never, if you are away from 
home, go within fifty yards of the sea, so 
long as there is snow on the rocks.” 

“But that is so very many things 
already : is it not enough ?” said Sheila. 

“You will faithfully remember and 
observe these rules ?” 

“I will.” 

“ Then you are a more obedient girl 
than I imagined or expected ; and you 
may now, if you are good, have the sat- 
isfaction of offering me a glass of sherry 
and a biscuit, for, rain or no rain, Lewis 
is a dreadful place for making people 
hungry.” 

Mackenzie need not have been afraid. 
Strange as it may appear, Lavender was 
well content with the wet weather. No 
depression or impatience or remonstrance 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


37 


was visible on his face when he went to 
the blurred windows, day after day, to 
see only the same desolate picture — the 
dark sea, the wet rocks, the gray mists 
over the moorland and the shining of 
the red gravel before the house. He 
would stand with his hands in his pocket 
and whistle “ Love in thine eyes for ever 
plays,” just as if he were looking out on 
a cheerful summer sunrise. When he 
and Sheila went to the door, and were re- 
ceived by a cold blast of wet wind and 
a driving shower of rain, he would slam 
the door to again with a laugh, and pull 
the girl back into the house. Some- 
times she would not be controlled ; and 
then he would accompany her about the 
garden as she attended to her duties, or 
would go down to the shore with her to 
give Bras a run. From these excursions 
he returned in the best of spirits, with a 
fine color in his face ; until, having got 
accustomed to heavy boots, impervious 
frieze and the discomfort of wet hands, 
he grew to be about as indifferent to the 
rain as Sheila herself, and went fishing 
or shooting or boating with much con- 
tent, whether it was wet or dry. 

“ It has been the happiest month of 
my life — I know that,” he said to Mac- 
kenzie as they stood together on the 
quay at Stornoway. 

“And I hope you will hef many like 
it in the Lewis,” said the old man cheer- 
fully. 

“I think I should soon learn to be- 
come a Highlander up here,” said Lav- 
ender, “if Sheila would only teach me 
the Gaelic.” 

“The Gaelic!” cried Mackenzie im- 
patiently. “ The Gaelic ! It is none of 
the gentlemen who will come here in the 
autumn will want the Gaelic ; and what 
for would you want the Gaelic — ay, if 
you was staying here the whole year 
round ?” 

“But Sheila will teach me all the 
same — won’t you, Sheila?” he said, 
turning to his companion, who was 
gazing somewhat blankly at the rough 
steamer and at the rough gray sea be- 
yond the harbor. 

“Yes,” said the girl: she seemed in 
no mood for joking. 


Lavender returned to town more in 
love than ever ; and soon the news of 
his engagement was spread abroad, he 
nothing loath. Most of his club-friends 
laughed, and prophesied it would come 
to nothing. How could a man in Lav- 
ender’s position marry anybody but an 
heiress ? He could not afford to go and 
marry a fisherman’s daughter. Others 
came to the conclusion that artists and 
writers and all that sort of people were 
incomprehensible, and said “Poor beg- 
gar!” when they thought of the fash- 
ion in which Lavender had ruined his 
chances in life. His lady friends, how- 
ever, were much more sympathetic. 
There was a dash of romance in the 
story ; and would not the Highland girl 
be a curiosity for a- little while after she 
came to town ? Was she like any of 
the pictures Mr. Lavender had hanging 
up in his rooms ? Had he not even a 
sketch of her? An artist, and yet not 
have a portrait of the girl he had chosen 
to marry ? Lavender had no portrait of 
Sheila to show. Some little photographs 
he had he kept for his own pocket-book, 
while in vain had he tried to get some 
sketch or picture that would convey to 
the little world of his friends and ac- 
quaintances some notion of his future 
bride. They were left to draw on their 
imagination for some presentiment of 
the coming princess. 

He told Mrs. Lavender, of course. 
She said little, but sent for Edward In- 
gram. Him she questioned in a cautious, 
close and yet apparently indifferent way, 
and then merely said that Frank was 
very impetuous, that it was a pity he had 
resolved on marrying out of his own 
sphere of life, but that she hoped the 
young lady from the Highlands would 
prove a good wife to him. 

“ I hope he will prove a good husband 
to her,” said Ingram with unusual sharp- 
ness. 

“Frank is very impetuous.” That 
was all Mrs. Lavender would say. 

By and by, as the spring drew on and 
the time of the marriage was coming 
nearer, the important business of taking 
and furnishing a house for Sheila’s re- 
ception occupied the attention of the 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


young man from morning till night. He 
had been somewhat disappointed at the 
cold fashion in which his aunt looked 
upon his choice, admitting everything he 
had to say in praise of Sheila, but never 
expressing any approval of his conduct 
or hope about the future ; but now she 
showed herself most amiably and gen- 
erously disposed. She supplied the young 
man with abundant funds wherewith to 
furnish the house according to his own 
fancy. It was a small place, fronting a 
somewhat commonplace square in Not- 
ting Hill, but it was to be a miracle of 
artistic adornment inside. He tortured 
himself for days over rival shades and 
hues ; he drew designs for the chairs ; 
he himself painted a good deal of pan- 
eling ; and, in short, gave up his whole 
time to making Sheila’s future home 
beautiful. His aunt regarded these 
preparations with little interest, but she 
certainly gave her nephew ample means 
to indulge the eccentricities of his fancy. 

“ Isn’t she a dear old lady ?” said Lav- 
ender one night to Ingram. “ Look here ! 
A cheque, received this morning, for two 
hundred pounds, for plate and glass.” 

Ingram looked at the bit of pale green 
paper: ‘‘I wish you had earned the 
money yourself, or done without the 
plate until you could buy it with your 
own money.” 

“ Oh, confound it, Ingram ! you carry 
your puritanical theories too far. Doubt- 
less I shall earn my own living by and 
by. Give me time.” 

‘‘It is now nearly a year since you 
thought of marrying Sheila Mackenzie, 
and you have not done a stroke of work 
yet.” 

“ I beg your pardon. I have worked 
a good deal of late, as you will see when 
you come up to my rooms.” 

“ Have you sold a single picture since 
last summer?” 

“ I cannot make people buy my pic- 
tures if they don’t choose to do so.” 

‘‘Have you made any effort to get 
them sold, or to come to any arrange- 
ment with any of the dealers ?” 

“ I have been too busy of late — look- 
ing after this house, you know,” said 
Lavender with an air of apology. 


‘‘You were not too busy to paint a fan 
for Mrs. Lorraine, that people say must 
have occupied you for months.” 

Lavender laughed: ‘‘Do you know, 
Ingram, I think you are jealous of Mrs. 
Lorraine, on account of Sheila ? Come, 
you shall go and see her.” 

‘‘No, thank you.” 

‘‘Are you afraid of your Puritan prin- 
ciples giving way?” 

“ I am afraid that you are a very fool- 
ish boy,” said the other with a good- 
humored shrug of resignation, ‘‘but I 
hope to see you mend when you marry.” 

‘‘Ah, then you will see a difference !” 
said Lavender seriously ; and so the dis- 
pute ended. 

It had been arranged that Ingram 
should go up to Lewis to the marriage, 
and after the ceremony in Stornoway 
return to Borva with Mr. Mackenzie, to 
remain with him a few days. But at 
the last moment Ingram was summoned 
down to Devonshire on account' of the 
serious illness of some near relative, and 
accordingly Frank Lavender started by 
himself to bring back with him his 
Highland bride. His stay in Borva was 
short enough on this occasion. At the 
end of it there came a certain wet and 
boisterous day, the occurrences in which 
he afterward remembered as if they had 
taken place in a dream. There were 
many faces about, a confusion of tongues, 
a good deal of dram-drinking, a skirl of 
pipes, and a hurry through the rain ; 
but all these things gave place to the 
occasional glance that he got from a 
pair of timid and trusting and beautiful 
eyes. Yet Sheila was not Sheila in that 
dress of white, with her face a trifle pale. 
She was more his own Sheila when she 
had donned her rough garments of blue, 
and when she stood on the wet deck 
of the vessel, with a great gray shawl 
around her, talking to her father with a 
brave effort at cheerfulness, although 
her lip would occasionally quiver as one 
or other of her friends from Borva — 
many of them barefooted children — 
came up to bid her good-bye. Her fa- 
ther talked rapidly, with a grand affec- 
tation of indifference. He swore at the 
weather. He bade her see that Bras 


8 9 


A PRINCESS 

was properly fed, and if the sea broke 
over his box in the night, he was to be 
rubbed dry, and let out in the morning 
for a run up and down the deck. She 
was not to forget the parcel directed to 
an innkeeper at Oban. They would 
find Oban a very nice place at which 
to break the journey to London, but as 
for Greenock, Mackenzie could find no 
words with which to describe Greenock. 

And then, in the midst of all this, 
Sheila suddenly said, “ Papa, when does 
the steamer leave ?” 

44 In a few minutes. They have got 
nearly all the cargo on board.” 

44 Will you do me a great favor, papa ?” 

'* Ay, but what is it, Sheila ?” 

44 1 want you not to stay here till the 
boat sails, and then you will have all 
the people on the quay vexing you when 
you are going away. I want you to bid 
good-bye to us now, and drive away 
round to the point, and we shall see you 
the last of all when the steamer has got 
out of the harbor.” 

44 Ferry well, Sheila, I will do that,” he 
said, knowing well why the girl wished it. 

So father and daughter bade good-bye 
to each other ; and Mackenzie went on 
shore with his face down, and said not 
a word to any of his friends on the quay, 
but got into the wagonette, and, lashing 
the horses, drove rapidly away. As he 


OF THULE^ 

had shaken hands with Lavender, Lav- 
ender had said to him, “Well, we shall 
soon be back in Borva again to see you ;” 
and the old man had merely tightened 
the grip of his hand as he left. 

The roar of the steam -pipes ceased, 
the throb of the engines struck the wa- 
ter, and the great steamer steamed away 
from the quay and out of the plain of 
the harbor into a wide world of gray 
waves and wind and rain. There stood 
Mackenzie as they passed, the dark fig- 
ure clearly seen against the pallid colors 
of the dismal day ; and Sheila waved 
a handkerchief to him until Stornoway 
and its lighthouse and all the promon- 
tories and bays of the great island had 
faded into the white mists that lay along 
the horizon. And then her arm fell to 
her side, and for a moment she stood 
bewildered, with a strange look in her 
eyes of grief, and almost of despair. 

44 Sheila, my darling, you must go be- 
low now,” said her companion: “you 
are almost dead with cold.” 

She looked at him for a moment, as 
though she had scarcely heard what he 
said. But his eyes were full of pity for 
her : he drew her closer to him, and put 
his arms round her, and then she hid 
her head in his bosom and sobbed there 
like a child. 



PART V 


CHAPTER X. 
FAIRY-LAND. 

ELCOME to London — !” 

He was about to add “ Sheila,” 
but suddenly stopped. The girl, who 
had hastily come forward to meet him 
with a glad look in her eyes and with 
both hands outstretched, doubtless per- 
ceived the brief embarrassment of the 
moment, and was perhaps a little amused 
by it. But she took no notice of it : she 
merely advanced to him and caught 
both his hands, and said, “And are you 
very well ?” 

It was the old and familiar salutation, 
uttered in the same odd, gentle, insinu- 
ating fashion, and in the same low and 
sweet voice. Sheila’s stay in Oban and 
the few days she had already spent in 
London had not taught her the differ- 
ence between “very” and “ferry.” 

“ It is so strange to hear you speak in 
London — Mrs. Lavender,” he said, with 
rather a wry face as he pronounced her 
full and proper title. 

And now it was Sheila’s turn to look a 
bit embarrassed and color, and appear 
uncertain whether to be vexed or pleased, 
when her husband himself broke in in 
his usual impetuous fashion : “ I say, 
Ingram, don’t be a fool ! Of course you 
must call her Sheila — unless when there 
are people here, and then you must 
please yourself. Why, the poor girl has 
enough of strange things and names 
about her already. I don’t know how 
she keeps her head. It would bewilder 
me, I know ; but I can see that, after she 
has stood at the window for a time, and 
begun to get dazed by all the wonderful 
sights and sounds outside, she suddenly 
withdraws and fixes all her attention on 
some little domestic duty, just as if she 
were hanging on to the practical things 
of life to assure herself it isn’t all a 
dream. Isn’t that so, Sheila ?” he said, 
putting his hand on her shoulder. 

“ You ought not to watch me like that,” 


she said with a smile. “But it is the 
noise that is most bewildering. There 
are many places I will know already 
when I see them, many places and things 
I have known in pictures ; but now the 
size of them, and the noise of carriages, 
and the people always passing, and al- 
ways different, always strangers, so that 
you never see the same people any 
more — But I am getting very much 
accustomed to it.” 

“You are trying very hard to get ac- 
customed to it, any way, my good girl,” 
said her husband. 

“You need not be in a hurry: you 
may begin to regret some day that you 
have not a little of that feeling of wonder 
left,” said Ingram. “But you have not 
told me anything of what you think about 
London, and of how you like it, and how 
you like your house, and what you have 
done with Bras, and a thousand other 
things.” 

“ I will tell you all that directly, when 
I have got for you some wine and some 
biscuits.” 

“Sheila, you can ring for them,” said 
her husband, but she had by that time 
departed on her mission. Presently she 
returned, and waited upon Ingram just 
as if she had been in her father’s house 
in Borva, with the gentlemen in a hurry 
to go out to the fishing, and herself the 
only one who could serve them. 

She put a small table close by the 
French window ; she drew back the cur- 
tains as far as they would go, to show 
the sunshine of a bright forenoon in 
May lighting up the trees in the square 
and gleaming on the pale and tall fronts 
of the houses beyond ; and she wheeled 
in three low easy-chairs, so as to front 
this comparatively cheerful prospect. 
Somehow or other, it seemed quite 
natural that Sheila should wheel in 
those chairs. It was certainly no dis- 
respect on the part of either her hus- 
band or her visitor which caused both 



A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


91 


of them to sit still and give her her own 
way about such things. Indeed, Lav- 
ender had not as yet ever attempted to 
impress upon Sheila the necessity of 
cultivating the art of helplessness. That, 
with other social graces, would perhaps 
come in good time. She would soon 
acquire the habits and ways of her 
friends and acquaintances, without his 
trying to force upon her a series of af- 
fectations, which would only embarrass 
her and cloud the perfect frankness and 
spontaneity of her nature. Of one thing 
he was quite assured — that whatever 
mistakes Sheila might make in society 
they would never render her ridiculous. 
Strangers might not know the absolute 
sincerity of her every word and act, 
which gave her a courage that had no 
fear of criticism, but they could at least 
see the simple grace and dignity of the 
girl, and that natural ease of manner 
which is beyond the reach of cultivation, 
being mainly the result of a thorough 
consciousness of honesty. To burden 
her with rules and regulations of con- 
duct would be to produce the very ca- 
tastrophes he wished to avoid. Where 
no attempt is made, failure is impossible ; 
and he was meanwhile well content that 
Sheila should simply appear as Sheila, 
even although she might draw in a chair 
for a guest or so far forget her dignity as 
to pour out some wine for her husband. 

“After all, Sheila,” said Lavender, 
“hadn’t I better begin and tell Ingram 
about your surprise and delight when 
you came near Oban and saw the tall 
hotels and the trees ? It was the trees, 
I think, that struck you most, because, 
you know, those in Lewis — well, to tell 
the truth — the fact is, the trees of Lewis 
— as I was saying, the trees of Lewis are 
not just — they cannot be said to be — ” 

“You bad boy, to say anything against 
the Lewis !” exclaimed Sheila ; and In- 
gram held that she was right, and that 
there were certain sorts of ingratitude 
more disgraceful than others, and that 
this was just about the worst. 

“ Oh, I have brought all the good away 
from Lewis,” said Lavender with a care- 
less impertinence. 

“ No,” said Sheila proudly. “You have 


not brought away my papa, and there is 
not any one in this country I have seen 
as good as he is.” 

“My dear, your experience of the 
thirty millions of folks in these islands 
is quite convincing. I was wholly in 
the wrong ; and if you forgive me we 
shall celebrate our reconciliation in a 
cigarette — that is to say, Ingram and I 
will perform the rites, and you can look 
on.” 

So Sheila went away to get the cigar- 
ettes also. 

“You don’t say you smoke in your 
drawing-room, Lavender?” said Ingram, 
mindful of the fastidious ways of his 
friend even when he had bachelor’s 
rooms in King street. 

“Don’t I, though? I smoke every- 
where — all over the place. Don’t you 
see, we have no visitors yet. No one is 
supposed to know we have come South. 
Sheila must get all sorts of things before 
she can be introduced to my friends and 
my aunt’s friends, and the house must 
be put to rights, too. You wouldn’t 
have her go to see my aunt in that sail- 
or’s Costume she used to rush about in 
up in Lewis ?” 

“ That is precisely what I would have,” 
said Ingram : “ she cannot look more 
handsome in any other dress.” 

“Why, my aunt would fancy I had 
married a savage: I believe she fears 
something of the sort now.” 

“And you haven’t told even her that 
you are in London ?” 

“No.” 

“Well, Lavender, that is a precious 
silly performance. Suppose she hears 
of your being in town, what will you say 
to her ?” 

“ I should tell her I wanted a few days 
to get my wife properly dressed before 
taking her about.” 

Ingram shrugged his shoulders : “ Per- 
haps you are right. Perhaps, indeed, it 
would be better if you waited six months 
before you introduced Sheila to your 
friends. At present you seem to be 
keeping the footlights turned down until 
everything is ready for the first scene, 
and then Sheila is to burst upon society 
in a blaze of light and color. Well, that 


92 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


is harmless enough ; but look here ! You 
don’t know much about her yet: you 
will be mainly anxious to hear what the 
audience, as it were, say of her ; and 
there is just a chance of your adopting 
their impressions and opinions of Sheila, 
seeing that you have no very fixed ones 
of your own. Now, what your social 
circle may think about her is a difficult 
thing to decide ; and I confess I would 
rather have seen you remain six months 
in Lewis before bringing her up here.” 

Ingram was at least a candid friend. 
It was not the first nor the hundredth 
time that Frank Lavender had to endure 
small lectures, uttered in a slow, delib- 
erate voice, and yet with an indifference 
of manner which showed that Ingram 
cared very little how sharply his words 
struck home. He rarely even apologized 
for his bluntness. These were his opin- 
ions : Lavender could take them or leave 
them, as he liked. And the younger 
man, after finding his face flush a bit 
on being accused of wishing to make 
a dramatic impression with Sheila’s en- 
trance into London society, laughed in 
an embarrassed way, and said, ‘‘It is 
impossible to be angry with you, Ingram, 
and yet you do talk so absurdly. I 
wonder who is likely to know more about 
the character of a girl than her own 
husband ?” 

‘‘You may in time: you don’t now,” 
said Ingram, carefully balancing a bis- 
cuit on the point of his finger. 

‘‘The fact is,” said Lavender with 
good-natured impatience, ‘‘you are the 
most romantic card I know, and there 
is no pleasing you. You have all sorts * 
of exalted notions about things — about 
sentiments and duties, and so forth. 
Well, all that is true enough, and would 
be right enough if the world were filled 
with men and women like yourself ; but 
then it isn’t, you see, and one has to give 
in to conventionalities of dress and liv- 
ing and ceremonies, if one wants to re- 
tain one’s friends. Now, I like to see 
you going about with that wide-awake — 
it suits your brown complexion and beard 
— and that stick that would do for herd- 
ing sheep ; and the costume looks well 
and is business-like and excellent when 


you’re off for a walk over the Surrey 
downs or lying on the river-banks about 
Henley or Cookham ; but it isn’t, you 
know, the sort of costume for a stroll in 
the Park.” 

‘‘Whenever God withdraws from me 
my small share of common sense,” said 
Ingram slowly, ‘‘so far that I shall begin 
to think of having my clothes made for 
the purpose of walking in Hyde Park, 
well — ” 

‘‘But don’t you see,” said Lavender, 
‘‘that one must meet one’s friends, 
especially when one is married ; and 
when you know that at a certain hour in 
the forenoon they are all to be found in 
a particular place, and that a very pleas- 
ant place, and that you will do yourself 
good by having a walk in the fresh air, 
and so forth, I really don’t see anything 
very immoral in going down for an hour 
or so to the Park.” 

“ Don’t you think the pleasure of see- 
ing one’s friends might be postponed till 
one had done some sort of good day’s 
work ?” 

‘‘There now!” cried Lavender, ‘‘that 
is another of your delusions. You are 
always against superstitions, and yet you 
make work a fetish. You do with work 
just as women do with duty : they carry 
about with them a convenient little 
god, and they are always worshiping it 
with small sacrifices, and complimenting 
themselves on a series of little martyr- 
doms that are of no good to anybody. 
Of course, duty wouldn’t be duty if it 
wasn’t disagreeable, and when they go 
nursing the sick — and they could get it 
ibetter done for fifteen shillings a week 
by somebody else — they don’t mind 
coming back to their families with the 
seeds of typhus about their gowns ; and 
when they crush the affections in order 
to worship at the shrine of duty, they 
don’t consider that they may be making 
martyrs of other folks, who don’t want 
martyrdom and get no sort of pleasure 
out of it. Now, what in all the world is 
the good of work as work ? I believe 
that work is an unmistakable evil, but 
when it is a necessity I suppose you get 
some sort of selfish satisfaction in over- 
coming it; and doubtless if there was 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


93 


' any immediate*necessity in my case — I 
don’t deny the necessity may arise, and 
that I should like nothing better than to 
work for Sheila’s sake — ” 

"Now you are coming to the point,” 

I said Ingram, who had been listening 
with his usual patience to his friend’s 
| somewhat chaotic speculations. ‘‘Per- 
haps you may have to work for your 
! wife’s sake and your own ; and I con- 
fess I am surprised to see you so content 
with your present circumstances. If 
j your aunt’s property legally reverted to 
I you, if you had any sort of family claim 
on it, that would make some little dif- 
i ference ; but you know that any sudden 
quarrel between you might leave you 
penniless to-morrow.” 

“ In which case I should begin to work 
to-morrow, and I should come to you 
I for my first commission.” 

‘‘ And you shouldn’t have it. I would 
leave you to go and fight the world for 
yourself ; without which a man knows 
nothing of himself or of his relations with 
| those around him.” 

| ‘‘Frank, dear, here are the cigar- 
j ettes,” said Sheila at this point; and 
: as she came and sat down the discus- 
sion ceased. 

For Sheila began to tell her friend of 
all the strange adventures that had be- 
fallen her since she left the far island of 
Lewis — how she had seen with fear the 
J great mountains of Skye lit up by the 
wild glare of a stormy sunrise ; how she 
had seen with astonishment the great 
fir-woods of Armadale ; and how green 
and beautiful were the shores of the 
Sound of Mull. And then Oban, with 
j its shining houses, its blue bay and 
its magnificent trees, all lit up by a fair 
and still sunshine ! She had not imag- 
ined there was anywhere in the world 
so beautiful a place, and could scarcely 
believe that London itself was more rich 
and nob]e and impressive ; for there 
I were beautiful ladies walking along the 
broad pavements, and there were shops 
with large windows that seemed to con- 
tain everything that the mind could de- 
! sire, and there was a whole fleet of 
j yachts in the bay. But it was the trees, 

I above all, that captivated her ; and she 


asked if they were lords who owned those 
beautiful houses built up on the hill and 
half smothered among lilacs and ash 
trees and rowan trees and ivy. 

*’ My darling,” Lavender had said to 
her, "if your papa were to come and 
live here, he could buy half a dozen of 
those cottages, gardens and all. They 
are mostly the property of well-to-do 
shopkeepers. If this little place takes 
your fancy, what will you say when you 
go South — when you see Wimbledon 
and Richmond and Kew, with their 
grand old commons and trees ? Why, 
you could hide Oban in a corner of 
Richmond Park !” 

"And my papa has seen all those 
places ?” 

“Yes. Don’t you think it strange he 
should have seen them all, and known 
he could live in any one of them, and 
then gone away back to Borva ?” 

“ But what would the poor people have 
done if he had never gone back ?” 

“ Oh, some one else would have taken 
his place.” 

"And then, if he were living here or in 
London, he might have got tired, and 
he might have wished to go back to the 
Lewis and see all the people he knew ; 
and then he would come amohg them 
like a stranger, and have no house to go 
to.” 

Then Lavender said, quite gently, 
" Do you think, Sheila, you will ever tire 
of living in the South ?” 

The girl looked up quickly, and said, 
with a sort of surprised questioning in 
her eyes, "No, not with you. But then 
we shall often go to the Lewis ?” 

“ Oh yes,” her husband said, " as often 
as we can conveniently. But it will take 
some time at first, you know, before you 
get to know all my friends who are to be 
your friends, and before you get proper- 
ly fitted into our social circle. That will 
take you a long time, Sheila, and you 
may have many annoyances or embar- 
rassments to encounter ; but you won’t 
be very much afraid, my girl ?” 

Sheila merely looked up to him : there 
was no fear in the frank, brave eyes. 

The first large town she saw struck a 
cold chill to her heart. On a wet and 


94 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


dismal afternoon they sailed into Green- 
ock. A heavy smoke hung about the 
black building - yards and the dirty 
quays; the narrow and squalid streets 
were filled with mud, and only the poor- 
er sections of the population waded 
through the mire or hung disconsolately 
about the corners of the thoroughfares. 
A gloomier picture could not well be 
conceived ; and Sheila, chilled with the 
long and wet sail and bewildered by the 
noise and bustle of the harbor, was driv- 
en to the hotel with a sore heart and a 
downcast face. 

“This is not like London, Frank?” 
she said, pretty nearly ready to cry with 
disappointment. 

“This? No. Well, it is like a part 
of London, certainly, but not the part 
you will live in.” 

“ But how can we live in the one place 
without passing the other and being 
made miserable by it ? There was no 
part of Oban like this.” 

“Why, you will live miles away from 
the docks and quays of London. You 
might live for a lifetime in London with- 
out ever knowing it had a harbor. Don’t 
you be afraid, Sheila. You will live in 
a district where there are far finer houses 
than any you saw in Oban, and far finer 
trees ; and within a few minutes’ walk 
you will find great gardens and parks, 
with lakes in them and wild- fowl, and 
you will be able to teach the boys about 
how to set the helm and the sails when 
they are launching their small boats.” 

“ I should like that,” said Sheila, with 
her face brightening. 

“ Perhaps you would like a boat vour- 
self?” 

“Yes,” she said frankly. “If there 
were not many people there, we might 
go out sometimes in the evening — ” 

Her husband laughed and took her 
hand: “You don’t understand, Sheila. 
The boats the boys have are little things 
a foot or two long — like the one in your 
papa’s bed-room in Borva. But many 
of the boys would be greatly obliged to 
you if you would teach them how to 
manage the sails properly, for some- 
times dreadful shipwrecks occur.” 

“You must bring them to our house. 


I am very fond of little boys, when they ! 
begin to forget to be shy, and let youj 
become acquainted with them.” 

“ Well,” said Lavender, “ I don’t know 
many of the boys who sail boats in the | 
Serpentine : you will have to make their ] 
acquaintance yourself. But I know one | 
boy whom I must bring to the house. I 
He is a German-Jew boy, who is going I 
to be another Mendelssohn, his friends | 
say. He is a pretty boy, with ruddy- 1 
brown hair, big black eyes and a fine ! 
forehead ; and he really sings and plays j 
delightfully. But you know, Sheila, you 
must not treat him as a boy, for he is \ 
over fourteen, I should think ; and if 
you were to kiss him — ” 

“He might be angry,” said Sheila 
with perfect simplicity. 

“ I might,” said Lavender; and then, 
noticing that she seemed a little sur- 
prised, he merely patted her head and 
bade her go and get ready for dinner. 

Then came the great climax of Shei- 
la’s southward journey — her arrival in 
London. She was all anxiety to see her 
future home ; and, as luck would have 
it, there was a fair spring morning shin- 
ing over the city. For a couple of hours 
before she had sat and looked out of 
the carriage-window as the train whirled I 
rapidly through the scarcely-awakened 
country, and she had seen the soft and 
beautiful landscapes of the South lit up 
by the early sunlight. How the bright 
little villages shone, with here and there 
a gilt weathercock glittering on the spire 
of some small gray church, while as yet 
in many valleys a pale gray mist lay 
along the bed of the level streams or 
clung to the dense woods on the upland 
heights ! Which was the more beautiful 
— the sharp, clear picture, with its bril- 
liant colors and its awakening life, or 
the more mystic landscape over which 
was still drawn the tender veil of the 
morning haze ? She could not tell. She 
only knew that England, as she then 
saw it, seemed a great country that was 
very beautiful, that had few inhabitants, 
and that was still and sleepy, and bath- 
ed in sunshine. How happy must the 
people be who lived in those quiet green 
valleys by ^he side of slow and smooth 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


95 


rivers, and amid great woods and ave- 
nues of stately trees, the like of which 
she had not imagined even in her 
dreams ! 

But from the moment that they got 
out at Euston Square she seemecfca trifle 
bewildered, and could only do implicitly 
as her husband bade her — clinging to 
his hand, for the most part, as if to 
make sure of guidance. She did indeed 
glance somewhat nervously at the han- 
som into which Lavender put her, ap- 
parently asking how such a tall and 
narrow two-wheeled vehicle could be 
prevented toppling over. But when he, 
having sent on all their luggage by a 
respectable old four-wheeler, got into 
the hansom beside her, and put his 
hand inside her arm, and bade her be 
of good cheer that she should have such 
a pleasant morning to welcome her to 
London, she said “Yes” mechanically, 
and only looked out in a wistful fashion 
at the great houses and trees of Euston 
Square, the mighty and roaring stream 
of omnibuses, the droves of strangers, 
mostly clad in black, as if they were 
going to church, and the pale blue smoke 
that seemed to mix with the sunshine 
and make it cold and distant. 

They were in no hurry, these two, on 
that still morning, and so, to impress 
Sheila all at once with a sense of the 
greatness and grandeur of London, he 
made the cabman cut down by Park 
Crescent and Portland Place to Regent 
Circus. Then they went along Oxford 
street; and there were crowded omni- 
buses taking young men into the city, 
while all the pavements were busy with 
hurrying passers-by. What multitudes 
of unknown faces, unknown to her and 
unknown to each other ! These people 
did not speak : they only hurried on, 
each intent upon his own affairs, caring 
nothing, apparently, for the din around 
them, and looking so strange and sad 
in their black clothes in the pale and 
misty sunlight. 

“You are in a trance, Sheila,” he said. 

She did not answer. Surely she had 
wandered into some magical city, for 
now the houses on one side of the way 
Suddenly ceased, and she saw before 
7 


her a great and undulating extent of 
green, with a border of beautiful flowers, 
and with groups of trees that met the 
sky all along the southern horizon. Did 
the green and beautiful country she had 
seen shoot in thus into the heart of the 
town, or was there another city far away 
on the other side of the trees? The 
place was almost as deserted as those 
still valleys she had passed by in the 
morning. Here, in the street, there was 
the roar of a passing crowd, but there 
was a long and almost deserted stretch 
of park, with winding roads and um- 
brageous trees, on which the wan sun- 
light fell from between loose masses of 
half-golden cloud. 

Then they passed Kensington Gar- 
dens, and there were more people walk- 
ing down the broad highways between 
the elms. 

“You are .getting nearly home now, 
Sheila,” he said. “ And you will be able 
to come and walk in these avenues when- 
ever you please.” 

Was this, then, her home ? — this sec- 
tion of a barrack-row of dwellings, all 
alike in steps, pillars, doors and win- 
dows ? When she got inside the serv- 
ant who had opened the door bobbed a 
curtsey to her : should she shake hands 
with her and say, “And are you ferry 
well ?” But at this moment Lavender 
came running up the steps, playfully 
hurried her into the house and up the 
stairs, and led her into her own drawing- 
room. “Well, darling, what do you think 
of your home, now that you see it ?” 

Sheila looked round timidly. It was 
not a big room, but it was a palace in 
height and grandeur and color com- 
pared with that little museum in Borva 
in which Sheila’s piano stood. It was 
all so strange and beautiful — the split 
pomegranates and quaint leaves on the . 
upper part of the walls, and underneath 
a dull slate color where the pictures 
hung ; the curious painting on the frames 
of the mirrors ; the brilliant curtains, 
with their stiff and formal patterns. It 
was not very much like a home as yet ; 
it was more like a picture that had been 
carefully planned and executed ; but she 
knew how he had thought of pleasing 


9 6 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


her in choosing these things, and with- 
out saying a word she took his hand and 
kissed it. And then she went to one of 
the three tall French windows and look- 
ed out on the square. There, between 
the trees, was a space of beautiful soft 
green, and some children dressed in 
bright dresses, and attended by a gov- 
erness in sober black, had just begun to 
play croquet. An elderly lady with a 
small white dog was walking along one 
of the graveled paths. An old man 
was pruning some bushes. 

“ It is very still and quiet here,” said 
Sheila. ‘‘ I was afraid we should have 
to live in that terrible noise always.” 

‘‘I hope you won’t find it dull, my 
darling,” he said. 

“ Dull, when you are here ?” 

‘‘But I cannot always be here, you 
know ?” 

She looked up. 

“You see, a man is so much in the 
way if he is dawdling about a house all 
day long. You would begin to regard me 
as a nuisance, Sheila, and would be for 
sending me out to play croquet with 
those young Carruthers, merely that you 
might get the rooms dusted. Besides, 
you know I couldn’t work here : I must 
have a studio of some sort — in the neigh- 
borhood, of course. And then you will 
give me your orders in the morning as 
to when I am to come round for luncheon 
or dinner.” 

“And you will be alone all day at 
your work ?” 

“Yes.” 

“ Then I will come and sit with you, 
my poor boy,” she said. 

“ Much work I should do in that case !” 
he said. “ But we’ll see. In the mean 
time go up stairs and get your things off : 
that young person below has breakfast 
ready, I dare say.” 

“But you have not shown me yet 
where Mr. Ingram lives,” said Sheila 
before she went to the door. 

“Oh, that is miles away. You have 
only seen a little bit of London yet. In- 
gram lives about as far away from here 
as the distance you have just come, but 
in another direction.” 

“ It is like a world made of houses,” 


said Sheila, “and all filled with stran- 
gers. But you will take me to see Mr. 
Ingram ?” 

“ By and by, yes. But he is sure to 
drop in on you as soon as he fancies you 
are settfed in your new home.” 

And here, at last, was Mr. Ingram 
come ; and the mere sound of his voice 
seemed to carry her back to Borva, so 
that in talking to him and waiting on 
him as of old she would scarcely have 
been surprised if her father had walked 
in to say that a coaster was making for 
the harbor, or that Duncan was going 
over to Stornoway, and Sheila would 
have to give him commissions. Her 
husband did not take the same interest 
in the social and political affairs of Bor- 
va that Mr. Ingram did. Lavender had 
made a pretence of assisting Sheila in 
her work among the poor people, but 
the effort was a hopeless failure. He 
could not remember the name of the 
family that wanted a new boat, and was 
visibly impatient when Sheila would sit 
down to write out for some aged crone 
a letter to her grandson in Canada. 
Now, Ingram, for the mere sake of oc- 
cupation, had qualified himself during 
his various visits to Lewis, so that he 
might have become the home minister 
of the King of Borva*; and Sheila was 
glad to have one attentive listener as 
she described all the wonderful things 
that had happened in the island since 
the previous summer. 

But Ingram had got a full and com- 
plete holiday on which to come up and 
see Sheila; and he had brought with 
him the wild and startling proposal that 
in order that she should take her first 
plunge into the pleasures of civilized 
life, her husband and herself should 
drive down to Richmond and dine at 
the Star and Garter. 

“What is that?” said Sheila. 

“My dear girl,” said her husband 
seriously, “ your ignorance is something 
fearful to contemplate. It is quite be- 
wildering. How can a person who does 
not know what the Star and Garter is be 
told what the Star and Garter is ?” 

“ But I am willing to go and see,” said 
Sheila. 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


97 


“Then I must look after getting a 
brougham,” said Lavender, rising. 

“ A brougham on such a day as this ?” 
exclaimed Ingram. “Nonsense! Get 
an open trap of some sort ; and Sheila, 
just to please me, will put on that very 
blue dress she used to wear in Borva, 
and the hat and the white feather, if she 
has got them.” 

“ Perhaps you would like me to put on 
a sealskin cap and a red handkerchief 
instead of a collar,” observed Lavender 
calmly. 

“You may do as you please. Sheila 
and I are going to dine at the Star and 
Garter.” 

“May I put on that blue dress ?” said 
the girl, going up to her husband. 

“Yes, of course, if you like,” said 
Lavender meekly, going off to order the 
carriage, and wondering by what route 
he could drive those two maniacs down 
to Richmond so that none of . his friends 
should see them. 

When he came back again, bringing 
with him a landau which could be shut 
up for the homeward journey at night, 
he had to confess that no costume seem- 
ed to suit Sheila so well as the rough 
sailor-dress ; and he was so pleased with 
her appearance that he consented at once 
to let Bras go with them in the carriage, 
on condition that Sheila should be re- 
sponsible for him. Indeed, after the first 
shiver of driving away from the square 
was over, he forgot that there was much 
unusual about the look of this odd pleas- 
ure-party. If you had told him eighteen 
months before that on a bright day in 
May, just as people were going home 
from the Park for luncheon, he would 
go for a drive in a hired trap with one 
horse, his companions being a man with 
a brown wide-awake, a girl dressed as 
though she were the owner of a yacht, 
and an immense deerhound, and that 
in this fashion he would dare to drive 
up to the Star and Garter and order din- 
ner, he would have bet five hundred to 
one that such a thing would never occur 
so long as he preserved his senses. But 
somehow he did not mind much. He 
was very much at home with those two 
people beside him ; the day was bright 


and fresh ; the horse went a good pace ; 
and once they were over Hammersmith 
Bridge and out among fields and trees, 
the country looked exceedingly pretty, 
and all the beauty of it was mirrored in 
Sheila’s eyes. 

“I can’t quite make you out in that 
dress, Sheila,” he said. “I am not sure 
whether it is real and business-like or a 
theatrical costume. I have seen girls on 
Ryde Pier with something of the same 
sort on, only a good deal more pro- 
nounced, you know, and they looked 
like sham yachtsmen ; and I have seen 
stewardesses wearing that color and 
texture of cloth — ” 

“But why not leave it as it is,” said 
Ingram — “a solitary costume produced 
by certain conditions of climate and 
duties, acting in conjunction with a 
natural taste for harmonious coloring 
and simple form ? That dress, I will 
maintain, sprang as naturally from the 
salt sea as Aphrodite did ; and the man 
who suspects artifice in it or invention 
has had his mind perverted by the skep- 
ticism of modern society.” 

“ Is my dress so very wonderful ?” said 
Sheila with a grave complaisance. “ I 
aha pleased that the Lewis has produced 
such a fine thing, and perhaps you would 
like me to tell you its history. It was 
my papa bought a piece of blue serge 
in Stornoway : it cost three shillings six- 
pence a yard, and a dressmaker in Stor- 
noway cut it for me, and I made it my- 
self. That is all the history of the won- 
derful dress.” 

Suddenly Sheila seized her husband’s 
arm. They had got down to the river 
by Mortlake ; and there, on the broad 
bosom of the stream, a long and slender 
boat was shooting by, pulled by four 
oarsmen clad in white flannel. 

“How can they go out in such a boat '?” 
said Sheila, with a great alarm visibleun 
her eyes. “ It is scarcely a boat afc.all ; 
and if they touch a rock or if the wind 
catches them — ” 

“Don’t be frightened, Sheila,” said 
her husband. “They are quite safe. 
There are no rocks in our rivers, and 
the wind does not give us squalls here 
like those on Loch Roag. You will see 


9 8 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


hundreds of those boats by and by, 
and perhaps you yourself will go out in 
one.” 

‘‘Oh, never, never!” she said, almost 
with a shudder. 

“Why, if the people here heard you 
they would not know how brave a sailor 
you are. You are not afraid to go out 
at night by yourself on the sea, and you 
won’t go on a smooth inland river — ” 

“ But those boats : if you touch them 
they must go over.” 

She seemed glad to get away from 
the river. She could not be persuaded 
of the safety of the slender craft of the 
Thames ; and indeed for some time after 
seemed so strangely depressed that Lav- 
ender begged and prayed of her to tell 
him what was the matter. It was sim- 
ple enough. She had heard him speak 
of his boating adventures. Was it in 
such boats as that she had just seen ? 
and might he not be some day going 
out in one of them, and an accident — 
the breaking of an oar, a gust of wind — 

There was nothing for it but to re- 
assure her by a solemn promise that in 
no circumstances whatever would he, 
Lavender, go into a boat without her 
express permission ; whereupon Sheila 
was as grateful to him as though he had 
dowered her with a kingdom. 

This was not the Richmond Hill of 
her fancy — this spacious height, with its 
great mansions, its magnificent elms, 
and its view of all the westward and 
wooded country, with the blue -white 
streak of the river winding through the 
green foliage. Where was the farm ? 
The famous Lass of Richmond Hill 
must have lived on a farm, but here 
surely were the houses of great lords 
and nobles, which had apparently been 
there for years and years. And was 
this really a hotel that they stopped at 
— this great building that she could only 
compare to Stornoway Castle ? 

“Now, Sheila,” said Lavender after 
they had ordered dinner and gone out, 
“mind you keep a tight hold on that 
leash, for Bras will see strange things in 
the Park.” 

“ It is I who will see strange things,” 
she said ; and the prophecy was amply 


fulfilled. For as they went along the tj 
broad path, and came better into view l« 
of the splendid undulations of woodland ; 
and pasture and fern, when on the one | 
hand they saw the Thames, far below ij 
them, flowing through the green and 
spacious valley, and on the other hand 
caught some dusky glimpse of the far 
white houses of London, it seemed to her ! 
that she had got into a new world, and 
that this world was far more beautiful than j 
the great city she had left. She did not ! 
care so much for the famous view from j 
the hill. She had cast one quick look to 
the horizon, with one throb of expecta- 
tion that the sea might be there. There 
was no sea there — only the faint blue of 
long lines of country apparently without 
limit. Moreover, over the western land- 
scape a faint haze prevailed, that in- 
creased in the distance and softened 
down the more distant woods into a 
sober gray. That great extent of w’ood- 
ed plain, lying sleepily in its pale mists, 
was not so cheerful as the scene around 
her, where the sunlight was sharp and 
clear, the air fresh, the trees flooded with 
a pure and bright color. Here, indeed, 
was a cheerful and beautiful world, and 
she was full of curiosity to know all 
about it and its strange features. What 
was the name of this tree ? and how did 
it differ from that? Were not these 
rabbits over by the fence ? and did rab- 
bits live in the midst of trees and bushes ? 
What sort of wood was the fence made 
of? and was it not terribly expensive to 
have such a protection ? Could not he 
tell the cost of a wooden fence ? Why 
did they not use wire netting? Was 
not that a loch away down there ? and 
what was its name ? A loch without a 
name ! Did the salmon come up to it ? 
and did any sea-birds ever come inland 
and build their nests on its margin ? 

“ Oh, Bras, you must come and look 
at the loch. It is a long time since you 
will see a loch.” 

And away she went through the thick 
breckan, holding on to the swaying leash 
that held the galloping greyhound, and 
running swiftly as though she had been 
making down for the shore to get out the 
Maighdean-mhara. 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


99 


“Sheila,” called her husband, “don’t 
be foolish !” 

“Sheila," called Ingram, “have pity 
on an old man!” 

Suddenly she stopped. A brace of 
partridges had sprung up at some little 
distance, and with a wild whirr of their 
wings were now directing their low and 
rapid flight toward the bottom of the 
valley. 

“What birds are those?” she said 
peremptorily. 

She took no notice of the fact that her 
companions were pretty nearly too blown 
to speak. There was a brisk life and 
color in her face, and all her attention 
was absorbed in watching the flight of 
the birds. Lavender fancied he saw in 
the fixed and keen look something of 
old Mackenzie’s gray eye : it was the 
first trace of a likeness to her father he 
had seen. 

“You bad girl!” he said, “they are 
partridges.” 

She paid no heed to this reproach, for 
what were those other things over there 
underneath the trees ? Bras had pricked 
up his ears, and there was a strange ex- 
citement in his look and in his trembling 
frame. 

“ Deer !” she cried, with her eyes as 
fixed as were those of the dog beside 
her. 

“ Well,” said her husband calmly, 
“what although they are deer ?” 

“But Bras — ” she said; and with 
that she caught the leash with both her 
hands. 

“Bras won’t mind them if you keep 
him quiet. I suppose you can manage 
him better than I can. I wish we had 
brought a whip.” 

“I would rather let him kill every 
deer in the Park than touch him with a 
whip,” said Sheila proudly. 

“You fearful creature, you don’t know 
what you say. That is high treason. 
If George Ranger heard you, he would 
have you hanged in front of the Star 
and Garter.” 

“Who is George Ranger?” said Shei- 
la with an air, as if she had said, “ Do 
you know that I am the daughter of the 
King of Borva, and whoever touches me 


will have to answer to my papa, who is 
not afraid of any George Ranger ?” 

“ He is a great lord who hangs all per- 
sons who disturb the deer in this Park.’ 

“ But why do they not go away?” said 
Sheila impatiently. “ I have never seen 
any deer so stupid. It is their own fault 
if they are disturbed : why do they re- 
main so near to people and to houses ?” 

“My dear child, if Bras wasn’t here 
you would probably find some of those 
deer coming up to see. if you had any 
bits of sugar or pieces of bread about 
your pockets.” 

“ Then they are like sheep — they are 
not like deer,” she said with some con- 
tempt. “ If I could only tell Bras that 
it is sheep he will be looking at, he would 
not look any more. And so small they 
are ! They are as small as the roe, but 
they have horns as big as many of the 
red-deer. Do people eat them ?” 

“ I suppose so.” 

“And what will they cost ?” 

“ I am sure I can’t tell you.” 

“Are they as good as the roe or the 
big deer?” 

“ I don’t know that, either. I don’t 
think I ever ate fallow-deer. But you 
know they are not kept here for that 
purpose. A great many gentlemen in 
this country keep a lot of them in their 
parks merely to look pretty. They cost 
a great deal more than they produce.” 

“ They must eat up a great deal of fine 
grass,” said Sheila almost sorrowfully. 
“ It is a beautiful ground for sheep — no 
rushes, no peat-moss, only fine, good 
grass and dry land. I should like my 
papa to see all this beautiful ground.” 

“I fancy he has seen it.” 

“Was my papa here ?” 

“ I think he said so.” 

“And did he see those deer ?” 

“ Doubtless.” 

“ He never told me of them.” 

By this time they had pretty nearly 
got down to the little lake, and Bras had 
been alternately coaxed and threatened 
into a quiescent mood. Sheila evident- 
ly expected to hear a flapping of sea- 
fowls’ wings when they got near the 
margin, and looked all around for the 
first sudden dart from the banks. But 


IOO 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


a dead silence prevailed, and as there 
were neither fish nor birds to watch, she 
went along to a wooden bench and sat 
down there, one of her companions on 
each hand. It was a pretty scene that 
lay before her — the small stretch of wa- 
ter ruffled with the wind, but showing a 
dash of blue sky here and there, the 
trees in the enclosure beyond clad in 
their summer foliage, the smooth green 
sward shining in the afternoon sunlight. 
Here, at least, was absolute quiet after 
the roar of London ; and it was some- 
what wistfully that she asked her hus- 
band how far this place was from her 
home, and whether, when he was at 
work, she could not come down here by 
herself. 

“Certainly,” he said, never dreaming 
that she would think of doing such a 
thing. 

By and by they returned to the hotel, 
and while they sat at dinner a great fire 
of sunset spread over the west, and the 
far woods became of a rich purple, 
streaked here and there with lines of 
pale white mist. The river caught the 
glow of the crimson clouds above, and 
shone duskily red amid the dark green 
of the trees. Deeper and deeper grew 
the color of the sun as it sank to the 
horizon, until it disappeared behind one 
low bar of purple cloud, and then the 
wild glow in the west slowly faded away, 
the river became pallid and indistinct, 
the white mists over the distant woods 
seemed to grow denser, and then, as 
here and there a lamp was lit far down 
in the valley, one or two pale stars ap- 
peared in the sky overhead, and the 
night came on apace. 

“It is so strange,” Sheila said, “to 
find the darkness coming on and not to 
hear the sound of the waves. I wonder 
if it is a fine night at Borva ?” 

Her husband went over to her and led 
her back to the table, where the candles, 
shining over the white cloth and the 
colored glasses, offered a more cheerful 
picture than the deepening landscape 
outside. They were in a private room, 
so that, when dinner was over, Sheila 
was allowed to amuse herself with the 
fruit, while her two companions lit their 


cigars. Where was the quaint old piano 
now, and the glass of hot whisky and 
water, and the “Lament of Monaltrie” 
or “ Love in thine eyes for ever plays ” ? 
It seemed, but for the greatness of the 
room, to be a repetition of one of those 
evenings at Borva that now belonged 
to a far-off past. Here was Sheila, not 
minding the smoke, listening to Ingram 
as of old, and sometimes saying some- 
thing in that sweetly inflected speech 
of hers ; here was Ingram, talking, as it 
were, out of a brown study, and morose- 
ly objecting to pretty nearly everything 
Lavender said, but always ready to 
prove Sheila right ; and Lavender him- 
self, as unlike a married man as ever, 
talking impatiently, impetuously and 
wildly, except at such times as he said 
something to his young wife, and then 
some brief smile and look or some pat 
on the hand said more than words. But 
where, Sheila may have thought, was 
the one wanting to complete the group ? 
Has he gone down to Borvabost to see 
about the cargoes of fish to be sent off 
in the morning ? Perhaps he is talking 
to Duncan outside about the cleaning of 
the guns or making up cartridges in the 
kitchen. When Sheila’s attention wan- 
dered away from the talk of her com- 
panions she could not help listening for 
the sound of the waves ; and as there 
was no such message coming to her from 
the great wooded plain without, her fancy 
took her away across that mighty coun- 
try she had traveled through, and car- 
ried her up to the island of Loch Roag, 
until she almost fancied she could smell 
the peat-smoke in the night-air, and 
listen to the sea, and hear her father 
pacing up and down the gravel outside 
the house, perhaps thinking of her as 
she was thinking of him. 

This little excursion to Richmond was 
long remembered by those three. It 
was the last of their meetings before 
Sheila was ushered into the big world 
to busy herself with new occupations and 
cares. It was a pleasant little journey 
throughout, for as they got into the 
landau to drive back to town the moon 
was shining high up in the southern 
heavens, and the air was mild and fresh, 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


IOI 


so that they had the carriage opened, 
and Sheila, well wrapped up, lay and 
looked around her with a strange won- 
der and joy as they drove underneath 
the shadow of the trees and out again 
into the clear sheen of the night. They 
saw the river, too, flowing smoothly and 
palely down between its dark banks ; 
and somehow here the silence checked 
them, and they hummed no more those 
duets they used to sing up at Borva. 
Of what were they thinking, then, 
as they drove through the clear night 
along the lonely road ? Lavender, at 
least, was rejoicing at his great good 
fortune that he had secured for ever to 
himself the true-hearted girl who now 
sat opposite him, with the moonlight 
touching her face and hair ; and he was 
laughing to himself at the notion that he 
did not properly appreciate her or un- 
derstand her or perceive her real cha- 
racter. If not he, who then ? Had he 
not watched every turn of her disposi- 
tion, every expression of her wishes, 
every grace of her manner and look of 
her eyes ? and was he not overjoyed to 
find that the more he knew of her the 
more he loved her ? Marriage had in- 
creased rather than diminished the mys- 
tery and wonder he had woven about 
her. He was more her lover now than 
he had been before his marriage. Who 
could see in her eyes what he saw ? El- 
derly folks can look at a girl’s eyes, and 
see that they are brown or blue or green, 
as the case may be ; but the lover looks 
at them and sees in them the magic 
mirror of a hundred possible worlds. 
How can he fathom the sea of dreams 
that lies there, or tell what strange fan- 
cies and reminiscences may be involved 
in an absent look ? Is she thinking of 
starlit nigl^s on some distant lake, or of 
the old bygone days on the hills ? All 
her former life is told there, and yet but 
half told, and he longs to become pos- 
sessed of all the beautiful past that she 
has seen. Here is a constant mystery to 
him, and there is a singular and wistful 
attraction for him in those still deeps 
where the thoughts and dreams of an in- 
nocent soul lie but half revealed. He 
does not see those things in the eyes of 


women he is not in love with ; but when 
in after years he is carelessly regarding 
this or the other woman, some chance 
look, some brief and sudden turn of ex- 
pression, will recall to, him, as with a 
stroke of lightning, all the old wonder- 
time, and his heart will go nigh to break- 
ing to think that he has grown old, 
that he has forgotten so much, and that 
the fair, wild days of romance and long- 
ing are passed away for ever. 

“Ingram thinks I don’t understand 
you yet, Sheila,” he said to her after 
they had got home and their friend had 
gone. 

Sheila only laughed, and said, “ I 
don’t understand myself sometimes.” 

“Eh? What?” he cried. “Do you 
mean to say that I have married a conun- 
drum ? If I have, I don’t mean to give 
you up, any way ; so you may go and 
get me a biscuit and a drop of the whisky 
we brought from the North with us.” 


CHAPTER XI. 

THE FIRST PLUNGE. 

Frank Lavender was a good deal 
more concerned than he chose to show 
about the effect that Sheila was likely to 
produce on his aunt ; and when at length 
the day arrived on which the young folks 
were to go down to Kensington Gore, he 
had inwardly to confess that Sheila seem- 
ed a great deal less perturbed than him- 
self. Her perfect calmness and self-pos- 
session surprised him. The manner in 
which she had dressed herself, with cer- 
tain modifications which he could not 
help approving, according to the fashion 
of the time, seamed to him a miracle of 
dexterity ; and how had she acquired 
the art of looking at ease in this attire, 
which was much more cumbrous than 
that she had usually worn in Borva ? 

If Lavender had but known the truth, 
he would have begun to believe Some- „ 
thing of what Ingram had vaguely hint- 
ed. This poor girl w*is looking toward 
her visit to Kensington Gore as the most 
painful trial of her life. While she was 
outwardly calm J and firm, and even • 
cheerful, her heart sank within her as 


102 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


she thought of the dreaded interview. 
Those garments which she wore with 
such an appearance of ease and com- 
fort had been the result of many an 
hour of anxiety, for how was she to tell, 
from her husband’s raillery, what colors 
the terrible old lady in Kensington would 
probably like ? He did not know that 
every word he said in joke about his 
aunt’s temper, her peevish ways, the 
awful consequences of offending her, 
and so forth, were like so many needles 
stuck into the girl’s heart, until she was 
ready to cry out to be released from this 
fearful ordeal. Moreover, as the day 
came near what he could not see in her 
she saw in him. Was she likely to be 
reassured when she perceived that her 
husband, in spite of all his fun, was 
really anxious, and when she knew that 
some blunder on her part might ruin 
him ? In fact, if he had suspected for a 
moment that she was really trembling to 
think of what might happen, he might 
have made some effort to give her cour- 
age. But apparently Sheila was as cool 
and collected as if she had been going 
to see John the Piper. He believed she 
could have gone to be presented to the 
queen without a single tremor of the 
heart. 

Still, he was a man, and therefore 
bound to assume an air of patronage. 
“She won’t eat you, really,’’ he said to 
Sheila as they were driving in a han- 
som down Kensington Palace Gardens. 
“All you have got to do is to believe in 
her theories of food. She won’t make 
you a martyr to them. She measures 
every half ounce of what she eats, but 
she won’t starve you ; and I am glad to 
think, Sheila, that you have brought a 
remarkably good and sensible appetite 
with you from the Lewis. Oh, by the 
way, take care you say nothing against 
Marcus Aurelius.” 

“I don’t know who he was, dear,” 
observed Sheila meekly. 

“ He was a Roman emperor and a 
philosopher. I suppose it was because 
he was an emperor that he found it easy 
to be a philosopher. However, my aunt 
is nuts on Marcus Aurelius : I beg your 
pardon, you don’t know the phrase. I 


My aunt makes Marcus Aurelius her 
Bible, and she is sure to read you bits 
from him, which you must believe, you 
know.” 

“I will try,” said Sheila doubtfully, 
“but if — ” 

“ Oh, it has nothing to do with religion. 
I don’t think anybody knows what Mar- 
cus Aurelius means, so you may as well 
believe it. Ingram swears by him, but 
he is always full of odd crotchets.” 

“ Does Mr. Ingram believe in Marcus 
Aurelius ?” said Sheila with some acces- 
sion of interest. 

“Why, he gave my aunt the book 
years ago — confound him ! — and ever 
since she has been a nuisance to her 
friends. For my own part, you know, I 
don’t believe that Marcus Aurelius was 
quite such an ass as Plato. He talks 
the same sort of perpetual common- 
places, but it isn’t about the True and 
the Good and the Beautiful. Would you 
like me to repeat to you one of the Dia- 
logues of Plato — about the immortality 
of Mr. Cole and the moral effect of the 
South Kensington Museum ?” 

“No, dear, I shouldn’t,” said Sheila. 

“You deprive yourself of a treat, but 
never mind. Here we are at my aunt’s 
house.” 

Sheila timidly glanced at the place 
while her husband paid the cabman. It 
was a tall, narrow, dingy-looking house 
of dark brick, with some black-green 
ivy at the foot of the walls, and with 
crimson curtains formally arranged in 
every one of the windows. If Mrs. Lav- 
ender was a rich old lady, why did she 
live in such a gloomy building ? Sheila 
had seen beautiful white houses in all 
parts of London : her own house, for 
example, was ever so much more cheer- 
ful than this one ; and yet sh^ had heard 
with awe of the value of this depressing 
little mansion in Kensington Gore, 

The door was opened by a man, who 
showed them up stairs and announced 
their names. Sheila’s heart beat quick- 
ly. She entered the drawing-room with 
a sort of mist before her eyes, and found 
herself going forward to a lady who sat 
at the farther end. She had a strangely 
vivid impression, amid all her alarm, 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


103 


that this old lady looked like the wither- 
ed kernel of a nut. Or was she not like 
a cockatoo ? It was through no antici- 
pation of dislike to Mrs. Lavender that 
the imagination of the girl got hold of 
that notion. But the little old lady held 
her head like a cockatoo. She had the 
hard, staring, observant and unimpres- 
sionable eyes of a cockatoo. What was 
there, moreover,- about the decorations 
of her head that reminded one of a 
cockatoo when it puts up its crest and 
causes its feathers to look like sticks of 
celery ? 

“Aunt Caroline, this is my wife.” 

“I am glad to see you, dear,” said 
the old lady, giving her hand, but not 
rising. “Sit down. When you are a 
little nervous you ought to sit down. 
Frank, give me that ammonia from the 
mantelpiece.” 

It was a small glass phial, and labeled 
“Poison.” She smelt the stopper, and 
then handed it to Sheila, telling her to 
do the same. 

“ Why did your maid do your hair in 
such a way ?” she asked suddenly. 

“ I haven’t got a maid,” said Sheila, 
“and I always do my hair so.” 

“Don’t be offended. I like it. But 
you must not make a fool of yourself. 
Your hair is too much that of a country 
beauty going to a ball. Paterson will 
show you how to do your hair.” 

“Oh, I say, aunt,” cried Lavender 
with a fine show of carelessness, “you 
mustn’t go and spoil her hair. I think 
it is very pretty as it is, and that woman 
of yours would simply go and make a 
mop of it. You’d think the girls now- 
a-days dressed their hair by shoving 
their head into a furze bush and giving 
it a couple of turns.” 

She paid no heed to him, but turned 
to Sheila and said, “You are an only 
child ?” 

“Yes.” 

“Why did you leave your father ?” 

The question was rather a cruel one, 
and it ,stung Sheila into answering 
bravely, “ Because my husband wished 
me.” 

“Oh. You think your husband is to 
be the first law of your life ?” 


“Yes, I do.” 

“Even when he is only silly Frank 
Lavender ?” 

Sheila rose. There was a quivering 
of her lips, but no weakness in the proud, 
indignant look of her eyes : “What you 
may say of me, that I do not care. But 
I will not remain to hear my husband 
insulted.” 

“Sheila,” said Lavender, vexed and 
anxious, and yet pleased at the same 
time by the courage of the girl — “ Sheila, 
it is only a joke. You must not mind : 
it is only a bit of fun.” 

“ I do not understand such jests,” she 
said calmly. 

“Sit dowm, like a good girl,” said the 
old lady with an air of absolute indiffer- 
ence. “ I did not mean to offend you. 
Sit down and be quiet. You will de- 
stroy your nervous system if you give 
way to such impulses. I think you are 
healthy. I like the look of you, but you 
will never reach a good age, as I hope 
to do, except by moderating your pas- 
sions. That is well : now take the am- 
monia again, and give it to me. You 
don’t wish to die young, I suppose ?” 

“ I am not afraid of dying,” said Sheila. 

“ Ring the bell, Frank.” 

He did so, and a tall, spare, grave- 
faced woman appeared. 

“ Paterson, you must put luncheon on 
to two-ten. I ordered it at one-fifty, did 
I not?” 

“Yes, m’m.” 

“ See that it is served at two-ten, and 
take this young lady and get her hair 
properly done. You understand? My 
nephew and I will wait luncheon for 
her.” 

“Yes, m’m.” 

Sheila rose with a great swelling in 
her throat. All her courage had ebbed 
away. She had reflected how pained 
her husband would be if she did not 
please this old lady ; and she was now 
prepared to do anything she was told, to 
receive meekly any remarks that might 
be made to her, to be quite obedient and 
gentle and submissive. But what was 
this tall and terrible woman going to do 
to her ? Did she really mean to cut 
away those great masses of hair to which 


104 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


Mrs. Lavender had objected ? Sheila 
would have let her hair be cut willingly 
for her husband’s sake ; but as she went 
to the door some wild and despairing 
notions came into her head of what her 
husband might think of her when once 
she was shorn of this beautiful personal 
feature. Would he look at her with sur- 
prise — perhaps even with disappoint- 
ment? 

“ Mind you don’t keep luncheon late,” 
he said to her as she passed him. 

She but indistinctly heard him, so 
great was the trembling within her. Her 
father would scarcely know his altered 
Sheila when she went back to Borva ; 
and what would Mairi say — Mairi who 
had many a time helped her to arrange 
those long tresses, and who was as proud 
of them as if they were her own ? She 
followed Mrs. Lavender’s tall maid up 
stairs. She entered a small dressing- 
room and glanced nervously round. 
Then she suddenly turned, looked for a 
moment at the woman, and said, with 
tears rushing up into her eyes, “JDoes 
Mrs. Lavender wish me to cut my hair ?” 

The woman regarded her with aston- 
ishment : “ Cut, miss ? — ma’am. I beg 
your pardon. No, ma’am, not at all. 
I suppose it is only some difference in 
the arrangement, ma’am. Mrs. Laven- 
der is very particular about the hair, and 
she has asked me to show several ladies 
how to dress their hair in the way she 
likes. But perhaps you would prefer 
letting it remain as it is, ma’am ?” 

‘‘Oh no, not at all!” said Sheila. “I 
should like to have it just as Mrs. Lav- 
ender wishes — in every way just as she 
wishes. Only, it will not be necessary 
to cut any ?” 

“ Oh no, miss — ma’am ; and it would 
be a great pity, if I may say so, to cut 
your hair.” 

Sheila was pleased to hear that. Here 
was a woman who had a large experi- 
ence in such matters among those very 
ladies of her husband’s social circle 
whom she had been a little afraid to 
meet. Mrs. Paterson seemed to admire 
her hair as much as the simple Mairi 
had done; and Sheila soon began to 
have less fear of this terrible tiring-wo- 


man, who forthwith proceeded with her 
task. 

The young wife went down stairs with 
a tower upon her head. She was very 
uncomfortable. She had seen, it is true, 
that this method of dressing the hair 
really became her — or rather would be- 
come her in certain circumstances. It 
was grand, imposing, statuesque, but 
then she did not feel statuesque just at 
this moment. She could have dressed 
herself to suit this style of hair ; she 
could have worn it with confidence if 
she had got it up herself ; but here she 
was the victim of an experiment. She 
felt like a school-girl about for the first 
time to appear in public in a long dress, 
and she was terribly afraid her husband 
would laugh at her. If he had any such 
inclination, he courteously suppressed it. 
He said the massive simplicity of this 
dressing of the hair suited her admira- 
bly. Mrs. Lavender said that Paterson 
was an invaluable woman ; and then 
they went down to the dining-room on 
the ground floor, where luncheon had 
been laid. 

The man who had opened the door 
waited on the two strangers : the inval- 
uable, Paterson acted as a sort of hench- 
woman to her mistress, standing by her 
chair and supplying her wants. She also 
had the management of a small pair of 
silver scales, in which pretty nearly ev- 
erything that Mrs. Lavender took in the 
way of solid food was carefully and ac- 
curately weighed. The conversation 
was chiefly alimentary, and Sheila lis- 
tened with a growing wonder to the de- 
scription of the devices by which the 
ladies of Mrs. Lavender’s acquaintance 
were wont to cheat fatigue or win an 
appetite or preserve their color. When 
by accident the girl herself was appeal- 
ed to, she had to confess to an astonish- 
ing ignorance of all such resources. She 
knew nothing of the relative strengths 
and effects of wines, though she was 
frankly ready to make any experiment 
her husband recommended. She knew 
what camphor was, but had never heard 
of bismuth. On cross-examination she 
had to admit that eau-de-cologne did not 
seem to her likely to be a pleasant 


A PRINCESS 


OF THULE. 


liquor before going to a ball. Did she 
not know the effect on brown hair of 
washing it in soda-water every night ? 
She was equably confessing her ignor- 
ance on all such points, when she was 
startled by a sudden question from Mrs. 
Lavender. Did she know what she was 
doing? 

She looked at her plate : there was 
on it a piece of cheese to which she had 
thoughtlessly helped herself. t Some- 
body had called it Roquefort — that was 
all she knew. 

“You have as much there, child, as 
would kill a ploughman ; and I suppose 
you would not have had the sense to 
leave it.” 

“Is it poison ?” said Sheila, regard- 
ing her plate with horror. 

“ All cheese is. Paterson, my scales.” 

She had Sheila’s plate brought to her, 
and the proper modicum of cheese cut, 
weighed and sent back. 

“ Remember, whatever house you are 
at, never to have more Roquefort than 
that.” 

“ It would be simpler to do without 
it,” said Sheila. 

“ It would be simple enough to do 
without a great many things,” said Mrs. 
Lavender severely. “ But the wisdom 
of living is to enjoy as many different 
things as possible, so long as you do so 
in moderation and preserve your health. 
You are young — you don’t think of such 
things. You think, because you have 
good teeth and a clear complexion, you 
can eat anything. But that won’t last. 
A time will come. Do you not know 
what the great emperor Marcus An- 
toninus says ? — ‘ In a little while thou 
wilt be nobody and nowhere, like Ha- 
drianus and Augustus.’ ” 

“Yes,” said Sheila. 

She had not enjoyed her luncheon 
much — she would rather have had a 
ham sandwich and a glass of spring 
water on the side of a Highland hill 
than this varied and fastidious repast 
accompanied by a good deal of physi- 
ology— r but it was too bad that, having 
successfully got through it, she should be 
threatened with annihilation immediate- 
ly afterward. It was no sort of consola- 


105 

tion to her to know that she would be in 
the same plight with two emperors. 

“Frank, you can go and smoke a 
cigar in the conservatory if you please. 
Your wife will come up stairs with me 
and have a talk.” 

Sheila would much rather have gone 
into the conservatory also, but she obe- 
diently followed Mrs. Lavender up stairs 
and into the drawing-room. It was 
rather a melancholy chamber, the cur- 
tains shutting out most of the daylight, 
and leaving you in a semi-darkness that 
made the place look big and vague and 
spectral. The little, shriveled woman, 
with the hard and staring eyes and 
silver-gray hair, bade Sheila sit down 
beside her. She herself sat by a small 
table, on which there were a tiny pair 
of scales, a bottle of ammonia, a fan, 
and a book bound in an old-fashioned 
binding of scarlet morocco and gold. 
Sheila wished this old woman would not 
look at her so. She wished there was a 
window open or a glint of sunlight 
coming in somewhere. But she was 
glad that her husband was enjoying 
himself in the conservatory; and that 
for two reasons. One of them was, that 
she did not like the tone of his talk while 
he and his aunt had been conversing to- 
gether about cosmetics and such matters. 
Not only did he betray a marvelous ac- 
quaintance with such things, but he seem- 
ed to take an odd sort of pleasure in 
exhibiting his knowledge. He talked 
about the tricks of fashionable women in 
a mocking way that Sheila did not quite 
like ; and of course she na-turally threw 
the blame on Mrs. Lavender. It was 
only when this old lady exerted a god- 
less influence over him that her good 
boy talked in such a fashion. There 
was nothing of that about him up in 
Lewis, nor yet at home in a certain snug 
little smoking-room which these two had 
come to consider the most comfortable 
corner in the house. Sheila began to 
hate women who used lip-salve, and 
silently recorded a vow that never, never, 
never would she wear anybody’s hair 
but her own. 

“ Do you suffer from headaches ?” said 
Mrs. Lavender abruptly. 


io6 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


“ Sometimes,” said Sheila. 

‘‘How often? What is an average? 
Two a week ?” 

‘‘Oh, sometimes I have not a head- 
ache for three or four months at a time.” 

“No toothache ?” 

“No.” 

“What did your mother die of?” 

“It was a fever,” said Sheila in a low 
voice, “ and she caught it while she was 
helping a family that was very bad with 
the fever.” 

“Does your father ever suffer from 
rheumatism ?” 

“No,” said Sheila. “My papa is the 
strongest man in the Lewis — I am sure 
of that.” 

“ But the strongest of us, you know,” 
said Mrs. Lavender, looking hardly at 
the girl — “the strongest of us will die 
and go into the general order of the 
universe ; and it is a good thing for you 
that, as you say, you are not afraid. 
Why should you be afraid ? Listen to 
this passage.” She opened the red 
book, and guided herself to a certain 
page by one of a series of colored rib- 
bons : “‘ He who fears death either fears 
the loss of sensation or a different kind 
of sensation. But if thou shalt have 
no sensation, neither wilt thou feel any 
harm ; and if thou shalt acquire another 
kind of sensation, thou wilt be a differ- 
ent kind of living being, and thou wilt 
not cease to live.’ Do you perceive the 
wisdom of that ?” 

“Yes,” said Sheila, and her own voice 
seemed hollow and strange to her in this 
big and dimly-lit chamber. 

Mrs. Lavender turned over a few more 
pages, and proceeded to read again ; 
and as she did so, in a slow, unsympa- 
thetic, monotonous voice, a spell came 
over the girl, the weight at her heart 
grew more and more intolerable, and the 
room seemed to grow darker: “‘Short, 
then, is the time which every man lives, 
and small the nook of the earth where 
he lives ; and short, too, the longest post- 
humous fame, and even this only con- 
tinued by a succession of poor human 
beings, who will very soon die, and who 
know not even themselves, much less 
him who died long ago.’ You cannot 


do better than ask your husband to buy 
you a copy of this book, and give it 
special study. It will comfort you in 
affliction, and reconcile you to whatever 
may happen to you. Listen : ‘ Soon will 
the earth cover us all; then the earth, 
too, will change, and the things also 
which result from change will continue 
to change for ever, and these again for 
ever. For if a man reflects on the 
changes and transformations which fol- 
low one another like wave after wave, 
and their rapidity, he will despise every- .j 
thing which is perishable.’ Do you un- 
derstand that ?” 

“Yes,” said Sheila, and it seemed [ 
to her that she was being suffocated. 
Would not the gray walls burst asunder j 
and show her one glimpse of the blue j 
sky before she sank into unconscious- j 
ness ? The monotonous tones of this 
old woman’s voice sounded like the ; 
repetition of a psalm over a coffin. It ! 
was as if she was already shut out from 1 
life, and could only hear in a vague j 
way the dismal words being chanted j 
over her by the people in the othei 1 
world. She rose, steadied herself for a ] 
moment by placing her hand on the 
back of the chair, and managed to say, 1 
“ Mrs. Lavender, forgive me for one mo- J 
ment : I wish to speak to my husband.” j 

She went to the door — Mrs. Lavender I 
being too surprised to follow her — and 3 
made her way down stairs. She had j 
seen the conservatory at the end of a 1 
certain passage. She reached it, and ' 
then she scarcely knew any more, ex- ] 
cept that her husband caught her in his 
arms as she cried, “Oh, Frank, Frank, I 
take me away from this house ! I am 
afraid : it terrifies me !” 

“ Sheila, what on earth is the matter ? \ 
Here, come out into the fresh air. By 
Jove, how pale you are ! Will you have ; 
some water?” 

He could not get to understand thor- j 
oughly what had occurred. What he 
clearly did learn from Sheila’s disjointed ! 
and timid explanations was that there 
had been another “scene,” and he knew ; 
that of all things in the world his aunt 1 
hated “ scenes” the worst. As soon as 1 
he saw that there was little the matter 1 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


with Sheila beyond considerable mental 
perturbation, he could not help address- 
ing some little remonstrance to her, and 
reminding her how necessary it was that 
she should not offend the old lady up 
stairs. 

“You should not be so excitable, Shei- 
la,” he said. “You take such exagge- 
rated notions about things. I am sure 
my aunt meant nothing unkind. And 
what did you say when you came away ?” 

“ I said I wanted to see you. Are you 
angry with me ?” 

“No, of course not. But then, you 
see, it is a little vexing just at this mo- 
ment. Well, let us go up stairs at once, 
and try and make up some excuse, like 
a good girl. Say you felt faint — any- 
thing.” 

“And you will come with me ?” 

“Yes. Now do try, Sheila, to make 
friends with my aunt. ‘She’s not such 
a bad sort of creature as you seem to 
think. She’s been very kind to me — 
she’ll be very kind to you when she 
knows you more.” 

Fortunately, no excuse was neces- 
sary, for Mrs. Lavender, in Sheila’s ab- 
sence, had arrived at the conclusion that 
the girl’s temporary faintness was due to 
that piece of Roquefort. 

“You see you must be careful,” she 
said when they entered the room. “ You 
are unaccustomed to a great many things 
you will like afterward.” 

“And the room is a little close,” said 
Lavender. 

“I don’t think so,” said his aunt, 
sharply : “look at the barometer.” 

“ I didn’t mean for you and me, Aunt 
Caroline,” he said, “but for her. Sheila 
has been accustomed to live almost 
wholly in the open air.” 

“ The open air in moderation is an 
excellent thing. I go out myself every 
afternoon, wet or dry. And I was going 
to propose, Frank, that you should leave 
her here with me for the afternoon, and 
come back and dine with us at seven. 
I am going out at four- thirty, and she 
could go with me.” 

“ It’s very kind of you, Aunt Caroline, 
but we have promised to call on some 
people close by here at four.” 


107 

Sheila looked up frightened. The 
statement was an audacious perversion 
of the truth. But then Frank Lavender 
knew very well what his aunt meant by 
going into the open air every afternoon, 
wet or dry. At one certain hour her 
brougham was brought round : she got 
into it, and had both doors and windows 
hermetically sealed, and then, in a semi- 
somnolent state, she was driven slowly 
and monotonously round the Park. How 
would Sheila fare if she were shut up in 
this box ? He told a lie with great 
equanimity, and saved her. 

Then Sheila was taken away to get 
on her things, and her husband waited, 
with some little trepidation, to hear what 
his aunt would say about her. He had 
not long to wait. 

“She’s got a bad temper, Frank.” 

“ Oh, I don’t think so, Aunt Caroline,” 
he said, considerably startled. 

“Mark my words, she’s got a bad 
temper, and she is not nearly so soft as 
she tries to make out. That girl has a 
great deal of firmness, Frank.” 

“ I find her as gentle and submissive 
as a girl could be — a little too gentle, 
perhaps, and anxious to study the wishes 
of other folks.” 

“ That is all very well with you. You 
are her master. She is not likely, to 
quarrel with her bread and butter. But 
you’ll see if she does not hold her own 
when she gets among your friends.” 

“ I hope she will hold her own.” 

The old lady only shook her head. 

“ I am sorry you should have taken a 
prejudice against her, Aunt Caroline,” 
said the young man humbly. 

“I take a prejudice! Don’t let me 
hear the word again, Frank. You know 
I have no prejudices. If I cannot give 
you a reason for anything I believe, then 
I cease to believe it.” 

“You have not heard her sing,” he 
said, suddenly remembering that this 
means of conquering the old lady had 
been neglected. 

“ I have no doubt she has many ac- 
complishments,” said Aunt Caroline 
coldly. “In time, I suppose, she will 
get over that extraordinary accent she 
has.” 


io8 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


"Many people like it.” 

“ I dare say you do — at present. But 
you may tire of it. You married her in 
a hurry, and you have not got rid of 
your romance yet. At the same time, I 
dare say she is a very good sort of girl, 
and will not disgrace you if you instruct 
her and manage her properly. But re- 
member my words — she has a temper, 
and you will find it out if you thwart 
her.” 

How sweet and fresh the air was, 
even in Kensington, when Sheila, having 
dressed and come down stairs, and after 
having dutifully kissed Mrs. Lavender 
and bade her good-bye, went outside 
with her husband ! It was like coming 
back to the light of day from inside the 
imaginary coffin in which she had fancied 
herself placed. A soft west wind was 
blowing over the Park, and a fairly clear 
sunlight shining on the May green of 
the trees. And then she hung on her 
husband’s arm, and she had him to 
speak to instead of the terrible old wo- 
man who talked about dying. 

And yet she hoped she had not offend- 
ed Mrs. Lavender, for Frank’s sake. 
What he thought about the matter he 
prudently resolved to conceal. 

“ Do you know that you have greatly 
pleased my aunt ?” he said, without the 
least compunction. He knew that if he 
breathed the least hint about what had 
actually been said, any possible amity 
between the two women would be ren- 
dered impossible for ever. 

“Have I, really?” said Sheila, very 
much astonished, but never thinking for 
a moment of doubting anything said by 
her husband. 

"Oh, she likes you awfully,” he said 
with an infinite coolness. 

“ I am so glad !” said Sheila, with her 
face brightening. "I was so afraid, 
dear, I had offended her. She did not 
look pleased with me.” 


By this time they had got into a han- 
som, and were driving down to the South 
Kensington Museum. Lavender would 
have preferred going into the Park, but 
what if his aunt, in driving by, were to 
see them ? He explained to Sheila the 
absolute necessity of his having to tell 
that fib about the four-o’clock engage- 
ment ; and when she heard described 
the drive in the closed brougham which 
she had escaped, perhaps she was not 
so greatly inclined as she ought to have 
been to protest against that piece of 
wickedness. 

“Oh yes, she likes you awfully,” he 
repeated, "and you must get to like her. 
Don’t be frightened by her harsh way 
of saying things : it is only a manner- 
ism. She is really a kind-hearted wo- 
man, and would do anything for me. 
That’s her best feature, looking at her 
character from my point of view.” 

" How often must we go to see her ?” 
asked Sheila. 

" Oh, not very often. But she will get 
up dinner-parties, at which you will be 
introduced to batches of her friends. 
And then the best thing you can do is 
to put yourself under her instructions, 
and take her advice about your dress 
and such matters, just as you did about 
your hair. That was very good of you.” 

"I am glad you were pleased with 
me,” said Sheila. "I will do what I 
can to like her. But she must talk 
more respectfully of you.” 

Lavender laughed that little matter 
off as a joke, but it was no joke to 
Sheila. She would try to like that old 
woman— yes : her duty to her husband 
demanded that she should. But there 
are some things that a wife — especially 
a girl who has been newly made a wife 
— will never forget ; which, on the con- 
trary, she will remember with burning 
cheeks and anger and indignation. 


PART VI 


CHAPTER XII. 
TRANSFORMATION. 

H AD Sheila, then, Lavender could 
not help asking himself, a bad 
temper, or any other qualities or cha- 
racteristics which were apparent to other 
people, but not to him ? Was it possible 
that, after all, Ingram was right, and 
that he had yet to learn the nature of 
the girl he had married ? It would be 
unfair to say that he suspected some- 
thing wrong about his wife— that he fan- 
cied she had managed to conceal some- 
thing — merely because Mrs. Lavender 
had said that Sheila had a bad temper ; 
but here was another person who main- 
tained that when the days of his romance 
were over he would see the girl in an- 
other light. 

Nay, as he continued to ask himself, 
had not the change already begun ? He 
grew less and less accustomed to see in 
Sheila a beautiful wild sea-bird that had 
fluttered down for a time into a strange 
home in the South. He had not quite 
forgotten or abandoned those imagina- 
tive scenes in which the wonderful sea- 
princess was to enter crowded drawing- 
rooms and have ail the world standing 
back to regard her and admire her and 
sing her praises. But now he was not 
so sure that that would be the result of 
Sheila’s entrance into society. As the 
date of a certain dinner-party drew near 
he began to wish she was more like the 
women he knew. He did not object to 
her strange sweet ways of speech, nor to 
her odd likes and dislikes, nor even to 
an unhesitating frankness that nearly 
approached rudeness sometimes in its 
scorn of all compromise with the truth ; 
but how would others regard these 
things? He did not wish to gain the 
reputation of having married an oddity. 

“Sheila,” he said on the morning of 
the day on which they were going to 
this dinner-party, “you should not say 
like-a-ness. There are only two sylla- 


bles in likeness. It really does sound 
absurd to hear you say like-a-ness." 

She looked up to him with a quick 
trouble in her eyes. When had he 
spoken to her so petulantly before? 
And then she cast down her eyes again, 
and said submissively, “ I will try not to 
speak like that. When you go out I 
take a book and read aloud, and try to 
speak like you ; but I cannot learn all 
at once.” 

“/ don’t mind,” he said. “But you 
know other people must think it so odd. 
I wonder why you should always say 
gyarden for garden now, when it is just 
as easy to s&y garden ?" 

Once upon a time he had said there 
was no English like the English spoken 
in Lewis, and had singled out this very 
word as typical of one peculiarity in the 
pronunciation. But she did not remind 
him of that. She only said in the same 
simple fashion, “If you will tell me my 
faults I will try to correct them.” 

She turned away from him to get an 
envelope for a letter she had been writ- 
ing to her father. He fancied something 
was wrong, and perhaps some touch of 
compunction smote him, for he went 
after her and took her hand, and said, 
“ Look here, Sheila. When I point out 
any trifles like that, you must not call 
them faults, and fancy I have any seri- 
ous complaint to make. It is for your 
own good that you should meet the peo- 
ple who will be your friends on equal 
terms, and give them as little as possible 
to talk about.” 

“ I should not mind their talking about 
me,” said Sheila with her eyes still cast 
down, “but it is your wife they must not 
talk about ; and if you will tell ipe any- 
thing I do wrong I will correct it.” 

“Oh, you must not think it is any- 
thing so serious as that. You will soon 
pick up from the ladies you will meet 
some notion of how you differ from them ; 
and if you should startle or puzzle them 


no 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


a little at first by talking about the 
chances of the fishing or the catching 
of wild-duck, or the way to reclaim bog- 
land, you will soon get over all that.” 

Sheila said nothing, but she made a 
mental memorandum of three things she 
was not to speak about. She did not 
know why these subjects should be for- 
bidden, but she was in a strange land 
and going to see strange people, whose 
habits were different from hers. More- 
over, when her husband had gone she 
reflected that these people, having no 
fishing and no peat-mosses and no wild- 
duck, could not possibly be interested in 
such affairs ; and thus she fancied she 
perceived the reason why she should 
avoid all mention of those things. 

When in the evening Sheila came 
down dressed and ready to go out, Lav- 
ender had to admit to himself that he 
had married an exceedingly beautiful 
girl, and that there was no country 
gawkiness about her manner, and no 
placid insipidity about her proud and 
handsome face. For one brief moment 
he triumphed in his heart, and had some 
wild glimpse of his old project of start- 
ling his small world with this vision from 
the northern seas. But when he got 
into the hired brougham, and thought 
of the people he was about to meet, and 
of the manner in which they would car- 
ry away such and such impressions of 
the girl, he lost faith in that admiration. 
He would much rather have had Sheila 
unnoticeable and unnoticed — one who 
would quietly take her place at the din- 
ner-table, and attract no more special 
attention than the flowers, for example, 
which every one would glance at with 
some satisfaction, and then forget in the 
interest of talking and dining. He was 
quite conscious of his own weakness in 
thus fearing social criticism. He knew 
that Ingram would have taken Sheila 
anywhere in her blue serge dress, and 
been quite content and oblivious of ob- 
servation. But then Ingram was inde- 
pendent of those social circles in which 
a married man must move, and in which 
his position is often defined for him by 
the disposition and manners of his wife. 
Ingram did not know how women talk- 


ed. It was for Sheila’s own sake, he 
persuaded himself, that he was anxious ; j 
about the impression she should make, ■ 
and that he had drilled her in all that ; 
she should do and say. 

‘‘Above all things,” he said, “mind 
you take no notice of me. Another man ! j 
will take you in to dinner, of course, and 
I shall take in somebody else, and we 
shall not be near each other. But it’s jj 
after dinner, I mean : when the men go 
into the drawing-room don’t you come j | 
and speak to me or take any notice of ■ 
me whatever.” 

“Mayn’t I look at you, Frank?” 

“If you do you’ll have half a dozen 
people all watching you, saying to them- 1 
selves or to each other, ‘ Poor thing ! I 
she hasn’t got over her infatuation yet. I 
Isn’t it pretty to see how naturally her < 
eyes turn toward him ?’ ” 

“But I shouldn’t mind them saying 
that,” said Sheila with a smile. 

“Oh, you mustn’t be pitied in that 
fashion. Let them keep their compas- I 
sion to themselves.” 

“Do you know, dear,” said Sheila j 
very quietly, “that I think you^exagge- j 
rate the interest people will take in me ? > 

I don’t think I can be of such import- 
ance to them. I don’t think they will ] 
be watching me as you fancy.” 

“Oh, you don’t know,” he said. “I 
know they fancy I have done something ( 
romantic, heroic and all that kind of 
thing, and they are curious to see you.” j 

“They cannot hurt me by looking at 
me,” said Sheila simply. “And they 
will soon find out how little there is to 
discover.” 

The house being in Holland Park 
they had not far to go ; and just as they i 
were driving up to the door a young man, f 
slight, sandy-haired and stooping, got 
out of a hansom and crossed the pave- 
ment. 

“By Jove!” said Lavender, “there is : 
Redburn. I did not know he knew Mrs. I 
Lorraine and her mother. That is Lord 
Arthur Redburn, Sheila: mind, if you 
should talk to him, not to call him * my 
lord.’ ” 

Sheila laughed and said, “ How am I 
to remember all these things ?” 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


Ill 


They got into the house, and by and 
by Lavender found himself, with Sheila 
on his arm, entering a drawing-room to 
present her to certain of his friends. It 
was a large room, with a great deal of 
gilding and color about it, and with a 
conservatory at the farther end ; but the 
blaze of light had not so bewildering an 
effect on Sheila’s eyes as the appearance 
of two ladies to whom she was now in- 
troduced. She had heard much about 
them. She was curious to see them. 
Many a time had she thought over the 
strange story Lavender had told her of 
the woman who heard that her husband 
was dying in a hospital during the war, 
and started off, herself and her daugh- 
ter, to find him out ; how there was in 
the same hospital another dying man 
whom they had known some years be- 
fore, and who had gone away because 
the girl would not listen to him ; how 
this man, being very near to death, beg- 
ged that the girl would do him the last 
favor he would ask of her, of wearing 
his name and inheriting his property ; 
and how, some few hours after the 
strange and sad ceremony had been 
performed, he breathed his last, happy 
in holding her hand. The father died 
next day, and the two widows were 
thrown upon the world, almost without 
friends, but not without means. This 
man Lorraine had been possessed of 
considerable wealth, and the girl who 
had suddenly become mistress of it 
found herself able to employ all possible 
means in assuaging her mother’s grief. 
They began to travel. The two women 
went from capital to capital, until at last 
they came to London ; and here, having 
gathered around them a considerable 
number of friends, they proposed to 
take up their residence permanently. 
Lavender had often talked to Sheila 
about Mrs. Lorraine — about her shrewd- 
ness, her sharp sayings, and the odd 
contrast between this clever, keen, frank 
woman of the world and the woman 
one would have expected to be the 
heroine of a pathetic tale. 

But were there two Mrs. Lorraines? 
That had been Sheila’s first question to 
herself when, after having been intro- 
8 


duced to one lady under that name, she 
suddenly saw before her another, who 
was introduced to her as Mrs. Kava- 
nagh. The mother and daughter were 
singularly alike. They had the same 
slight and graceful figure, which made 
them appear taller than they really were, 
the same pale, fine and rather hand- 
some features, the same large, clear 
gray eyes, and apparently the same 
abundant mass of soft fair hair, heavily 
plaited in the latest fashion. They were 
both dressed entirely in black, except 
that the daughter had a band of blue 
round her slender waist. It was soon 
apparent, too, that the manner of the 
two women was singularly different ; 
Mrs. Kavanagh bearing herself with a 
certain sad reserve that almost approach- 
ed melancholy at times, while her daugh- 
ter, with more life and spirit in her face, 
passed rapidly through all sorts of vary- 
ing moods, until one could scarcely tell 
whether the affectation lay in a certain 
cynical audacity in her speech, or wheth- 
er it lay in her assumption of a certain 
coyness and archness, or whether there 
was any affectation at all in the matter. 
However that might be, there could be 
no doubt about the sincerity of those 
gray eyes of hers. There was some- 
thing almost cruelly frank in the clear 
look of them ; and when her face was, 
not lit up by some passing smile the* 
pale and fine features seemed to borrow 1 
something of severity from her unflinch- 
ing, calm and dispassionate habit of re- 
garding those around her. 

Sheila was prepared to like Mrs. Lor- 
raine from the first moment she had 
caught sight of her. The honesty of 
the gray eyes attracted her. And, in- 
deed, the young widow seemed very 
much interested in the young wife, and, 
so far as she could in that awkward 
period just before dinner, strove to make 
friends with her. Sheila was introduced 
to a number of people, but none of them 
pleased her so well as Mrs. Lorraine. 
Then dinner was announced, and Sheila 
found that she was being escorted across 
the passage to the room on the other 
side by the young man whom she had 
seen get out of the hansom. 


1 1 2 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


This Lord Arthur Redburn was the 
younger son of a great Tory duke ; he 
represented in the House a small coun- 
try borough which his father practically 
owned ; he had a fair amount of ability, 
an uncommonly high opinion of him- 
self, and a certain affectation of being 
bored by the frivolous ways and talk 
of ordinary society. He gave himself 
credit for being the clever member of 
the family ; and if there was any clev- 
erness going, he had it ; but there were 
some who said that his reputation in the 
House and elsewhere as a good speaker 
was mainly based on the fact that he 
had an abundant assurance and was 
not easily put out. Unfortunately, the 
public could come to no decision on the 
point, for the reporters were not kind to 
Lord Arthur, and the substance of his 
speeches was as unknown to the world 
as his manner of delivering them. 

Now, Mrs. Lorraine had intended to 
tell this young man something about the 
girl whom he was to take in to dinner, 
but she herself had been so occupied 
with Sheila that the opportunity escaped 
her. Lord Arthur accordingly knew only 
that he was beside a very pretty woman, 
who was a Mrs. Somebody — the exact 
name he had not caught — and that the 
few words she had spoken were pro- 
nounced in a curious way. Probably, 
he thought, she was from Dublin. 

He also arrived at the conclusion that 
she was too pretty to know anything 
about the Deceased Wife’s Sister bill, 
in which he was, for family reasons, 
deeply interested, and considered it 
more likely that she would prefer to talk 
about theatres and such things. 

"Were you at Covent Garden last 
night?” he said. 

"No,” answered Sheila. "But I was 
there two days ago, and it is very pretty 
to see the flowers and the fruit; and 
then they smell so sweetly as you walk 
through.” 

"Oh yes, it is delightful,” said Lord 
Arthur. "But I was speaking of the 
theatre.” 

"Is there a theatre in there ?” 

He stared at her, and inwardly hoped 
she was not mad. 


" Not in among the shops, no. But don’t 
you know Covent Garden Theatre ?’’ 

"I have never been in any theatre, 
not yet,” said Sheila. 

And then it began to dawn upon him 
that he must be talking to Frank Lav- 
ender’s wife. Was there not some rumor 
about the girl having come from a re- 
mote part of the Highlands ? He de- 
termined on a bold stroke : "You have 
not been long enough in London to see 
the theatres, I suppose.” 

And then Sheila, taking it for granted 
that he knew her husband very well, 
and that he was quite familiar with all 
the circumstances of the case, began to 
chat to him freely enough. He found 
that this Highland girl of whom he had 
heard vaguely was not at all shy. He 
began to feel interested. By and by he 
actually made efforts to assist her frank- 
ness by becoming equally frank, and by 
telling her all he knew of the tilings 
with which they were mutually acquaint- 
ed. Of course by this time they had 
got up into the Highlands. The young 
man had himself been in the Highlands 
— frequently, indeed. He had never 
crossed to Lewis, but he had seen the 
island from the Sutherlandshire coast. 
There were very many deer in Suther- 
landshire, were there not ? Yes, he had 
been out a great many times, and had 
had his share of adventures. Had he 
not gone out before daylight, and waited 
on the top of a hill, hidden by some 
rocks, to watch the mists clear along the 
hillsides and in the valley below ? Did 
not he tremble when he fired his first 
shot, and had not something passed be- 
fore his eyes so that he could not see for 
a moment whether the stag had fallen 
or was away like lightning down the 
bed of the stream ? Somehow or other, 
Lord Arthur found himself relating all 
his experiences, as if he were a novice 
begging for the good opinion of a mas- 
ter. She knew all about it, obviously, 
and he would tell her his small adven- 
tures if only that she might laugh at 
him. But Sheila did not laugh. She 
was greatly delighted to have this talk 
about the hills and the deer and the wet 
mornings. She forgot all about the din- 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


ner before her. The servants whipped 
off successive plates without her seeing 
anything of them : they received ran- 
dom answers about wine, so that she 
had three full glasses standing by her 
untouched. She was no more in Hol- 
land Park at that moment than were 
the wild animals of which she spoke so 
proudly and lovingly. If the great and 
frail masses of flowers on the table 
brought her any perfume at all, it was 
a scent of peat-smoke. Lord Arthur 
thought that his companion was a little 
too frank and confiding, or rather that 
she would have been had she been talk- 
ing to any one but himself. He rather 
liked it. He was pleased to have es- 
tablished friendly relations with a pretty 
woman in so short a space ; but ought 
not her husband to give her a hint about 
not admitting all and sundry to the en- 
joyment of these favors ? Perhaps, too, 
Lord Arthur felt bound to admit to him- 
self there were some men who more 
than others inspired confidence in wo- 
men. He laid no claims to being a fas- 
cinating person, but he had had his 
share of success, and considered that 
Sheila showed discrimination as well as 
good-nature in talking so to him. There 
was, after all, no necessity for her hus- 
band to warn her. She would know 
how to guard against admitting all men 
to a like intimacy. In the mean time 
he was very well pleased to be sitting 
beside this pretty and agreeable com- 
panion, who had an abundant fund of 
good spirits, and who showed no sort of 
conscious embarrassment in thanking 
you with a bright look of her eyes or by 
a smile when you told her something that 
pleased or amused her. 

But these flattering little speculations 
were doomed to receive a sudden check. 
The juvenile M. P. began to remark that 
a shade occasionally crossed the face of 
his fair companion, and that she some- 
times looked a little anxiously across 
the table, where Mr. Lavender and Mrs. 
Lorraine were seated, half hidden from 
view by a heap of silver and flowers in 
the middle of the board. But though 
they could not easily be seen, except at 
such moments as they turned to address 


113 

some neighbor, they could be distinctly 
enough heard when there was any lull 
in the general conversation. And what 
Sheila heard did not please her. She 
began to like that fair, clear-eyed young 
woman less. Perhaps her husband meant 
nothing by the fashion in which he talk- 
ed of marriage and the condition of a 
married man, but she would rather have 
not heard him talk so. Moreover, she 
was aware that in the gentlest possible 
fashion Mrs. Lorraine was making fun 
of her companion, and exposing him to 
small and graceful shafts of ridicule ; 
while he seemed, on the whole, to enjoy 
these attacks. 

The ingenuous self- love of Lord Arthur 
Redburn, M. P., was severely wounded 
by the notion that, after all, he had been 
made a cat’s-paw of by a jealous wife. 
He had been flattered by this girl’s ex- 
ceeding friendliness ; he had given her 
credit for a genuine impulsiveness which 
seemed to him as pleasing as it was un- 
common ; and he had, with the modera- 
tion expected of a man in politics who 
hoped some day to assist in the govern- 
ment of the nation by accepting a junior 
lordship, admired her. But was it all 
pretence ? Was she paying court to him 
merely to annoy her husband ? Had 
her enthusiasm about the shooting of 
red-deer been prompted by a wish to 
attract a certain pair of eyes at the other 
side of the table ? Lord Arthur began 
to sneer at himself for having been 
duped. He ought to have known. Wo- 
men were as much women in a Hebrid- 
ean island as in Bayswater. He began 
to treat Sheila with a little more cool- 
ness, while she became more and more 
preoccupied with the couple across the 
table, and sometimes was innocently 
rude in answering his questions some- 
what at random. 

When the ladies were going into the 
drawing-room, Mrs. Lorraine put her 
hand within Sheila’s arm* and led he* 
to the entrance to the conservatory. 11 . 
hope we shall be friends,” she said. 

“ I hope so,” said Sheila, not very 
warmly. 

‘‘Until you get better acquainted with 
your husband’s friends you will feel 


I T 4 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


rather lonely at being left as at present, 
I suppose.” 

“A little,” said Sheila. 

“ It is a silly thing altogether. If men 
smoked after dinner I could understand 
it. But they merely sit, looking at wine 
they don’t drink, talking a few common- 
places and yawning.” 

“Why do they do it, then?” said 
Sheila. 

“They don’t do it everywhere. But 
here we keep to the manners and cus- 
toms of the ancients.” 

“What do you know about the man- 
ners of the ancients ?” said Mrs. Kava- 
nagh, tapping her daughter’s shoulder 
as she passed with a sheet of music. 

“I have studied them frequently, 
mamma,” said the daughter with com- 
posure, “ — in the monkey-house at the 
Zoological Gardens.” 

The mamma smiled, and passed on 
to place the music on the piano. Sheila 
did not understand what her companion 
had said ; and indeed Mrs. Lorraine im- 
mediately turned, with the same calm, 
fine face and careless eyes, to ask Sheila 
whether she would not, by and by, sing 
one of those northern songs of which 
Mr. Lavender had told her. 

A tall girl, with her back hair tied in 
a knot and her costume copied from a 
well-known pre-Raphaelite drawing, sat 
down to the piano and sang a mystic 
song of the present day, in which the 
moon, the stars and other natural ob- 
jects behaved strangely, and were some- 
how mixed up with the appeal of a 
maiden who demanded that her dead 
lover should be reclaimed from the sea. 

“ Do you ever go down to your hus- 
band’s studio?” said Mrs. Lorraine. 

Sheila glanced toward the lady at the 
piano. 

“Oh, you may talk,” said Mrs. Lor- 
raine, with the least expression of con- 
tempt in the gray eyes. “ She is singing 
to gratify herself, not us.” 

“Yes, I sometimes go down,” said 
Sheila in as low a voice as she could 
manage without falling into a whisper, 
“ and it is such a dismal place. It is 
very hard on him to have to work in a 
big bare room like that, with the win- 


I dows half blinded. But sometimes I 
think Frank would rather have me out 
of the way.” 

“ And what would he do if both of us 
were to pay him a visit ?” said Mrs. Lor- 
raine. “ I should so like to see the studio ! 
Won’t you call for me some day and 
take me with you ?” 

Take her with her, indeed ! Sheila 
began to wonder that she did not pro- 
pose to go alone. Fortunately, there 
was no need to answer the question, for 
at this moment the song came to an 
end, and there was a general movement 
and murmur of gratitude. 

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Lorraine to 
the lady who had sung, and who was 
now returning to the photographs she 
had left — “thank you very much. I 
knew some one would instantly ask you 
to sing that song : it is the most charm- 
ing of all your songs, I think, and how 
well it suits your voice, too !” 

Then she turned to Sheila again : 
“How did you like Lord Arthur Red- 
burn ?” 

“ I think he is a very good young 
man.” 

“Young men are never good, but 
they may be very amiable,” said Mrs, 
Lorraine, not perceiving that Sheila had 
blundered on a wrong adjective, and 
that she had really meant that she 
thought him honest and pleasant. 

“You did not speak at all, I think, to 
your neighbor on the right: that was 
wise of you. He is a most insufferable 
person, but mamma bears with him for 
the sake of his daughter, who sang just 
now. He is too rich. And he smiles 
blandly, and takes a sort of after-dinner 
view of things, as if he coincided with 
the arrangements of Providence. Don’t 
you take coffee? Tea, then. I have 
met your aunt— I mean, Mr. Lavender’s 
aunt : such a dear old lady she is !” 

“I don’t like her,” said Sheila. 

“Oh, don’t you, really?” 

“Not at present, but I shall try to like 
her.” 

“Well,” said Mrs. Lorraine calmly, 
“you know she has her peculiarities. I 
wish she wouldn’t talk so much about 
Marcus Antoninus and doses of medicine. 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


I fancy I smell calomel when she comes 
near. I suppose if she were in a panto- 
mime, they’d dress her up as a phial, 
tie a string round her neck and label 
her ' Poison.’ Dear me, how languid 
one gets in this climate ! Let us sit 
down. I wish I was as strong as 
mamma.” 

They sat down together, and Mrs. 
Lorraine evidently expected to be petted 
and made much of by her new com- 
panion. She gave herself pretty little 
airs and graces, and said no more cut- 
ting things about anybody. And Sheila 
somehow found herself being drawn to 
the girl, so that she could scarcely help 
taking her hand, and saying how sorry 
she was to see her so pale and fine and 
delicate. The hand, too, was so small 
that the tiny white fingers seemed scarce- 
ly bigger than the claws of a bird. Was 
not that slender waist, to which some 
little attention was called by a belt of 
bold blue, just a little too slender for 
health, although the bust and shoul- 
ders were exquisitely and finely pro- 
portioned ? 

‘‘We were at the Academy all the 
morning, and mamma is not a bit tired. 
Why has not Mr. Lavender anything in 
the Academy? Oh, I forgot,” she add- 
ed, with a smile. ‘‘Of course, he has 
been very much engaged. But now I 
suppose he will settle down to work.” 

Sheila wished that this fragile-looking 
girl would not so continually refer to her 
husband ; but how was any one to find 
fault with her when she put a little air 
of plaintiveness into the ordinarily cold 
gray eyes, and looked at her small hand 
as much as to say, “ The fingers there 
are very small, and even whiter than 
the glove that covers them. They are 
the fingers of a child, who ought to be 
petted.” 

Then the men came in from the din- 
ing-room. Lavender looked round to 
see where Sheila was — perhaps with a 
trifle of disappointment that she was not 
the most prominent figure there. Had 
he expected to find all the women sur- 
rounding her and admiring her, and all 
the men going up to pay court to her ? 
Sheila was seated near a small table, 


”5 

and Mrs. Lorraine was showing her 
something. She was just like anybody 
else. If she was a wonderful sea-prin- 
cess who had come into a new world, 
no one seemed to observe her. The 
only thing that distinguished her from 
the women around her was her fresh- 
ness of color and the unusual combina- 
tion of black eyelashes and dark blue 
eyes. Lavender had arranged that Shei- 
la’s first appearance in public should be 
at a very quiet little dinner-party, but 
even here she failed to create any pro- 
found impression. She was, as he had 
to confess to himself again, just like 
anybody else. 

He went over to where Mrs. Lorraine 
was, and sat down beside her. Sheila, 
remembering his injunctions, felt bound 
to leave him there ; and as she rose to 
speak to Mrs. Kavanagh, who was stand- 
ing by, that lady came and begged her 
to sing a Highland song. By this time 
Lavender had succeded in interesting 
his companion about something or other, 
and neither of them noticed that Sheila 
had gone to the piano, attended by the 
young politician who had taken her in 
to dinner. Nor did they interrupt their 
talk merely because some one played a 
few bars of prelude. But what was this 
that suddenly startled Lavender to the 
heart, causing him to look up with sur- 
prise ? He had not heard the air since 
he was in Borva, and when Sheila sang 

Hark, hark ! the horn 

On mountain-breezes borne ! 

Awake, it is morn, 

Awake, Monaltrie ! — 

all sorts of reminiscences came rushing 
in upon him. How often had he heard 
that wild story of Monaltrie’s flight sung 
out in the small chamber over the sea, 
with a sound of the waves outside and 
a scent of sea-weed coming in at the 
door and the windows ! It was from the 
shores of Borva that young Monaltrie 
must have fled. It must have been in 
Borva that his sweetheart sat in her 
bower and sang, the burden of all her 
singing being “ Return, Monaltrie !” 
And then, as Sheila sang now, making 
the monotonous and plaintive air wild 
and strange — 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


1 16 


What cries of wild despair 
Awake the sultry air ? 

Frenzied with anxious care, 

She seeks Monaltrie — 

he heard no more of the song. He was 
thinking of bygone days in Borva, and 
of old Mackenzie living in his lonely 
house there. When Sheila had finished 
singing he looked at her, and it seemed 
to him that she was still that wonderful 
princess whom he had wooed on the 
shores of the Atlantic. And if those 
people did not see her as he saw her, 
ought he to be disappointed because of 
their blindness ? 

But if they saw nothing mystic or won- 
derful about Sheila, they at all events 
were considerably surprised by the 
strange sort of music she sang. It was 
not of a sort commonly heard in a Lon- 
don drawing-room. The pathos of its 
minor chords, its abrupt intervals, start- 
ling and wild in their effect, and the 
slowly subsiding wail in which it closed, 
did not much resemble the ordinary 
drawing-room “piece.” Here, at least, 
Sheila had produced an impression ; 
and presently there was a heap of peo- 
ple round the piano, expressing their 
admiration, asking questions and beg- 
ging her to continue. But she rose. 
She would rather not sing just then. 
Whereupon Lavender came out to her 
and said, “Sheila, won’t you sing that 
wild one about the farewell — that has 
the sound of the pipes in it, you know?” 

“Oh yes,” she said directly. 

Lavender went back to his companion. 

“She is very obedient to you,” said 
Mrs. Lorraine with a smile. 

“Yes, at present,” he said; and he 
thought meanly of himself for saying it 
the moment the words were uttered. 

Oh, soft be thy slumbers, by Tigh-na-linne’s waters ; 
Thy late-wake was sung by Macdiarmid’s fair daugh- 
ters ; 

Hut far in Lochaber the true heart was weeping 
Whose hopes are entombed in the grave where thou’rt 
sleeping. 

So Sheila sang ; and it seemed to the 
people that this ballad was even more 
strange than its predecessor. When the 
song was over, Sheila seemed rather 
anxious to get out of the crowd, and 
indeed walked away into the conserva- 
tory to have a look at the flowers. 


Yes, Lavender had to confess to him- 
self, Sheila was just like anybody else 
in this drawing-room. His sea-princess 
had produced no startling impression. 
He forgot that he had just been teach- 
ing her the necessity of observing the 
ways and customs of the people around 
her, so that she might avoid singularity. 

On one point, at least, she was re- 
solved she would attend to his counsels : 
she would not make him ridiculous by 
any show of affection before the eyes of 
strangers. She did not go near him the 
whole evening. She remained for the 
most part in that half conservatory, half 
ante-room at the end of the drawing- 
room ; and when any one talked to her 
she answered, and when she was left 
alone she turned to the flowers. All 
this time, however, she could observe 
that Lavender and Mrs. Lorraine were 
very much engrossed in their conver- 
sation ; that she seemed very much 
amused, and he at times a trifle embar- 
rassed ; and that both of them had ap- 
parently forgotten her existence. Mrs. 
Kavanagh was continually coming to 
Sheila and trying to coax her back into 
the larger room, but in vain. She would 
rather not sing any more that night. 
She liked to look at flowers. She was 
not tired at all, and she had already 
seen those wonderful photographs about 
which everybody was talking. 

“Well, Sheila, how did you enjoy 
yourself?” said her husband as they 
were driving home. 

“ I wish Mr. Ingram had been there,” 
said Sheila. 

“ Ingram ! He would not have stop- 
ped in the place five minutes, unless he 
could play the part of Diogenes and 
say rude things to everybody all round. 
Were you at all dull ?” 

“A little.” 

“ Didn’t somebody look after you ?” 

“Oh yes, many persons were ver^ 
kind. But — but — ” 

“Well ?” 

“ Nobody seemed to be better off than 
myself. They all seemed to be wanting 
something to do ; and I am sure they 
were all very glad to come away.” 

“No, no, no, Sheila. That is only 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


your fancy. You were not much inter- 
ested, that is evident ; but you will get 
on better when you know more of the 
people. You were a stranger — that is 
what disappointed you — but you will 
not always be a stranger.” 

Sheila did not answer. Perhaps she 
contemplated with no great hope or 
longing the possibility of her coming to 
like such a method of getting through 
an evening. At all events, she looked 
forward with no great pleasure to the 
chance of her having to become friends 
with Mrs. Lorraine. All the way home 
Sheila was examining her own heart to 
try to discover why such bitter feelings 
should be there. Surely that girl was 
honest : there was honesty in her eyes. 
She had been most kind to Sheila her- 
self. And was there not at times, when 
she abandoned the ways and speech of 
a woman of the world, a singular coy 
fascination about her, that any man 
might be excused for yielding to, even 
as any woman might yield to it ? Sheila 
fought with herself, and resolved that 
she would cast forth from her heart 
those harsh fancies and indignant feel- 
ings that seemed to have established 
themselves there. She would not hate 
Mrs. Lorraine. 

As for Lavender, what was he think- 
ing of, now that he and his young wife 
were driving home from their first ex- 
periment in society ? He had to confess 
to a certain sense of failure. His dreams 
had not been realized. Every one who 
had spoken to him had conveyed to him, 
as freely as good manners would admit, 
their congratulations and their praises 
of his wife. But the impressive scenes 
he had been forecasting were out of the 
question. There was a little curiosity 
about her on the part of those who knew 
her story, and that was all. Sheila bore 
herself very well. She made no blun- 
ders. She had a good presence, she 
sang well, and every one could see that 
she was handsome, gentle and honest. 
Surely, he argued with himself, that 
ought to content the most exacting. But, 
in spite of all argument, he was not con- 
tent. He did not regret that he had 
sacrificed his liberty in a freak of ro- 


1 17 

mance ; he did not even regard the fact 
of a man in his position having dared to 
marry a penniless girl as anything very 
meritorious or heroic ; but he had hoped 
that the dramatic circumstances of the 
case would be duly recognized by his 
friends, and that Sheila would be an ob- 
ject of interest and wonder and talk in 
a whole series of social circles. But the 
result of his adventure was different. 
There was only one married man the 
more in London, and London was not 
disposed to pay any particular heed to 
that circumstance. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON. 

If Frank Lavender had been told that 
his love for his wife was in danger of 
waning, he would have laughed the sug- 
gestion to scorn. He was as fond of her 
and as proud of her as ever. Who knew 
as well as himself the tenderness of her 
heart, the delicate sensitiveness of her 
conscience, the generosity of self-sacri- 
fice she was always ready to bestow? 
and was he likely to become blind, so 
that he should fail to see how fair and 
frank and handsome she was ? He had 
been disappointed, it is true, in his fan- 
cies about the impression she would pro- 
duce on his friends; but what a trifle 
was that ! The folly of those fancies 
was his own. For the rest, he was glad 
that Sheila was not so different from the 
other women whom he knew. He hit 
upon the profound reflection, as he sat 
alone in his studio, that a man’s wife, 
like his costume, should not be so re- 
markable as to attract attention. The 
perfection of dress was that you should 
be unconscious of its presence : might 
that not be so with marriage ? After all, 
it was better that he had not bound him- 
self to lug about a lion whenever he 
visited people’s houses. 

Still, there was something. He found 
himself a good deal alone. Sheila did 
not seem to care much for going into 
society ; and although he did not much 
like the notion of going by himself, 
nevertheless one had certain duties to- 


n8 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


ward one’s friends to perform. She did 
not even care to go down to the Park of 
a forenoon. She always professed her 
readiness to go, but he fancied it was a 
trifle tiresome for her; and so, when 
there was nothing particular going on in 
the studio, he would walk down through 
Kensington Gardens himself, and have 
a chat with some friends, followed gen- 
erally by luncheon with this or the other 
party of them. Sheila had been taught 
that she ought not to come so frequently 
to that studio. Bras would not lie quiet. 
Moreover, if dealers or other strangers 
should come in, would they not take her 
for a model ? So Sheila stayed at home ; 
and Mr. Lavender, after having dressed 
with care in the morning — with very 
singular care, indeed, considering that 
he was going to his work — used to go 
down to his studio to smoke a cigarette. 
The chances were that he was not in a 
humor for working. He would sit down 
in an easy-chair and kick his heels on 
the floor for a time, watching perhaps 
the sunlight come in through the upper 
part of the windows and paint yellow 
squares on the opposite wall. Then he 
would go out and lock the door behind 
him, leaving no message whatever for 
those crowds of importunate dealers 
who, as Sheila fancied, were besieging 
him with offers in one hand and purses 
of gold in the other. 

One morning, after she had been in- 
doors for two or three days, and had 
grown hopelessly tired of the monotony 
of watching that sunlit square, she was 
filled with an unconquerable longing to 
go away, for however brief a space, from 
the sight of houses. The morning was 
sweet and clear and bright, white clouds 
were slowly crossing a fair blue sky, and 
a fresh and cool breeze was blowing in 
at the open French windows. 

“Bras,” she said, going down stairs 
and out into the small garden, “we are 
going into the country.” 

The great deer-hound seemed to know, 
and rose and came to her with great 
gravity, while she clasped on the leash. 
He was no frisky animal to show his 
delight by yelping and gamboling, but 
he laid his long nose in her hand, and 


slowly wagged the down-drooping curve 
of his shaggy tail ; and then he placid- 
ly walked by her side up into the hall, 
where he stood awaiting her. 

She would go along and beg of her 
husband to leave his work for a day and 
go with her for a walk down to Rich- 
mond Park. She had often heard Mr. 
Ingram speak of walking down, and she 
remembered that much of the road was 
pretty. Why should not her husband 
have one holiday ? 

“ It is such a shame,” she had said to 
him that morning as he left, “that you 
will be going into that gloomy place, 
with its bare walls and chairs, and the 
windows so that you cannot see out of 
them !” 

“I must get some work done some- 
how, Sheila,” he said, although he did 
not tell her that he had not finished a 
picture since his marriage. 

“ I wish I could do some of it for you,” 
she said. 

“You ! All the work you’re good for 
is catching fish and feeding ducks and 
planting things in gardens. Why don’t 
you come dowri and feed the ducks in 
the Serpentine ?” 

“I should like to do that,” she an- 
swered. “ I will go any day with you.” 

“Well,” he said, “you see, I don’t 
know until I get along to the studio 
whether I can get away for the fore- 
noon ; and then if I were to come back 
here, you would have little or no time to 
dress. Good-bye, Sheila.” 

“Good-bye,” she had said to him, 
giving up the Serpentine without much 
regret. 

But the forenoon had turned out so 
delightful that she thought she would 
go along to the studio, and hale him out 
of that gaunt and dingy apartment. 
She should take him away from town : 
therefore she might put on that rough 
blue dress in which she used to go boat- 
ing in Loch Roag. She had lately 
smartened it up a bit with some white 
braid, and she hoped he would approve. 

Did the big hound know the dress ? 
He rubbed his head against her arm 
and hand when she came down, and 
looked up and whined almost inaudibly. 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


“You are going out, Bras, and you 
must be a good dog and not try to go 
after the deer. Then I will send a very 
good story of you to Mairi ; and when 
she comes to London after the harvest 
is over, she will bring you a present 
from the Lewis, and you will be very 
proud.” 

She went out into the square, and was 
perhaps a little glad to get away from 
it, as she was not sure of the blue dress 
and the small hat with its sea-gull’s 
feather being precisely the costume she 
ought to wear. When she got into the 
Uxbridge road she breathed more free- 
ly, and in the lightness of her heart she 
continued her conversation with Bras, 
giving that attentive animal a vast 
amount of information, partly in Eng- 
lish, partly in Gaelic, which he answered 
only by a low whine or a shake of his 
shaggy head. 

But these confidences were suddenly 
interrupted. She had got down to Ad- 
dison Terrace, and was contentedly 
looking at the trees and chatting to the 
dog, when by accident her eye happen- 
ed to light on a brougham that was driv- 
ing past. In it — she beheld them both 
clearly for a brief second — were her 
husband and Mrs. Lorraine, so engaged 
in conversation that neither of them saw 
her. Sheila stood on the pavement for 
a couple of minutes absolutely bewilder- 
ed. All sorts of wild fancies and recol- 
lections came crowding in upon her — 
reasons why her husband was unwilling 
that she should visit his studio, why Mrs. 
Lorraine never called on her, and so 
forth and so forth. She did not know 
what to think for a time ; but presently 
all this tumult was stilled, and she had 
resolved her doubts and made up her 
mind as to what she should do. She 
would not suspect her husband — that 
was the one sweet security to which she 
clung. He had made use of no dupli- 
city : if there were duplicity in the case 
at all, he could not be the author of it. 
The reasons for his having of late left 
her so much alone were the true reasons. 
And if this Mrs. Lorraine should amuse 
him and interest him, who ought to 
grudge him this break in the monotony 


119 

of his work ? Sheila knew that she her- 
self disliked going to those fashionable 
gatherings to which Mrs. Lorraine went, 
and to which Lavender had been accus- 
tomed to go before he was married. 
How could she expect him to give up 
all his old habits and pleasures for her 
sake ? She would be more generous. 
It was her own fault that she was not a 
better companion for him; and was it 
for her, then, to think hardly of him 
because he went to the Park with a 
friend instead of going alone ? 

Yet there was a great bitterness and 
grief in her heart as she turned and 
walked on. She spoke no more to the 
deer-hound by her side. There seemed 
to be less sunlight in the air, and the 
people and carriages passing were hard- 
ly so busy and cheerful and interesting 
as they had been. But all the same, 
she would go to Richmond Park, and 
by herself ; for what was the use in call- 
ing in at the studio ? and how could she 
go back home and sit in the house, 
knowing that her husband was away at 
some flower-show or morning concert, 
or some such thing, with that young 
American lady ? 

She knew no other road to Richmond 
than that by which they had driven 
shortly after her arrival in London ; and 
so it was that she went down and over 
Hammersmith Bridge, and round by 
Mortlake, and so on by East Sheen. 
The road seemed terribly long. She 
was an excellent walker, and in ordinary 
circumstances would have done the dis- 
tance without fatigue ; but when at 
length she saw the gates of the Park 
before her, she was at once exceedingly 
tired and almost faint from hunger. 
Here was the hotel in which they had 
dined : should she enter ? The place 
seemed very grand and forbidding : she 
had scarcely even looked at it as she 
went up the steps with her husband by 
her side. However, she would venture, 
and accordingly she went up and into the 
vestibule, looking rather timidly about. 
A young gentleman, apparently not a 
waiter, approached her and seemed to 
wait for her to speak. It was a terrible 
moment. What was she to ask for? 


120 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


and could she ask it of this young man ? 
Fortunately, he spoke first, and asked 
her if she wished to go into the coffee- 
room, and if she expected any one. 

“No, I do not expect any one,” she 
said ; and she knew that he would per- 
ceive the peculiarity of her accent ; “ but 
if you will be kind enough to tell me 
where I may have a biscuit — ” 

It occurred to her that to go into the 
Star and Garter for a biscuit was absurd ; 
and she added wildly, “ — or anything 
to eat.” 

The young man obviously regarded 
her with some surprise; but he was 
very courteous, and showed her into the 
coffee-room and called a waiter to her. 
Moreover, he gave permission for Bras 
to be admitted into the room, Sheila 
promising that he would lie under the 
table and not budge an inch. Then 
she looked round. There were only 
three persons in the room — one, an old 
lady seated by herself in a far corner, 
the other two being a couple of young 
folks too much engrossed with each 
other to mind any one else. She began 
to feel more at home. The waiter sug- 
gested various things for lunch, and she 
made her choice of something cold. 
Then she mustered up courage to ask 
for a glass of sherry. How she would 
have enjoyed all this as a story to tell 
to her husband but for that incident of 
the morning ! She would have gloried 
in her outward bravery, and made him 
smile with a description, of her inward 
terror. She would have written about 
it to the old man in Borva, and bid him 
consider how she had been transformed, 
and what strange scenes Bras was now 
witnessing. But all that was over. She 
felt as if she could no longer ask her 
husband to be amused by her childish 
experiences ; and as for writing to her 
father, she dared not write to him in her 
present mood. Perhaps some happier 
time would come. Sheila paid her bill. 
She had heard her husband and Mr. 
Ingram talk about tipping waiters, and 
knew that she ought to give something 
to the man who had attended on her. 
But how much ? He was a very august- 
looking person, with formally-cut whis- 


kers and a severe expression of face. 
When he had brought back the change 
to her she timidly selected a half crown 
and offered it to him. There was a lit- 
tle glance of surprise : she feared she 
had not given him enough. Then he 
said “Thank you !” in a vague and dis- 
tant fashion, and she knew that she had 
not given him enough. But it was too 
late. Bras was summoned from under 
the table, and again she went out into 
the fresh air. 

“Oh, my good dog !” she said to him 
as they together walked up to the gates 
and into the Park, “this is a very ex- 
travagant country. You have to pay 
half a crown to a servant for bringing 
you a piece of cold pie, and then he 
looks as if he was not paid enough. 
And Duncan, who will do everything 
about the house, and will give us all our 
dinners, it is only a pound a week he 
will get, and Scarlett has to be kept out 
of that. And wouldn’t you like to see 
poor old Scarlett again ?” 

Bras whined as if he understood every 
word. 

“ I suppose now she is hanging out 
the washing on the gooseberry bushes, 
and you know the song she always used 
to sing then ? Don’t you know that 
Scarlett carried me about long before 
you were born, for you are a mere in- 
fant compared with me ? and she used 
to sing to me — 

Ged' bheirte mi’ bho’n bhas so. 

Mho Sheila bheag 6g ! 

And that is what she is singing just now 
in the garden ; and Mairi she is bringing 
the things out of the washing-house. 
Papa is over in Stornoway this morning, 
arranging his accounts with the people 
there ; and perhaps he is down at the 
quay, looking at the Clansman, and 
wondering when she is to bring me into 
the harbor. The castle is all shut up, 
you know, with cloths over all the won- 
derful things, and the curtains all down, 
and most of the shutters shut. Do you 
think papa has got my letter in his pock- 
et, and does he read it over and over 
again, as I read all his letters to me 
over and over again? Ah — h! You 
bad dog !” 


A rRINCESS OF THULE. 


1 2 1 


Bras had forgotten to listen to his mis- 
tress in the excitement of seeing in the 
distance a large herd of deer under cer- 
tain trees. She felt by the leash that he 
was trembling in every limb with expec- 
tation, and straining hard on the collar. 
Again and again she admonished him 
in vain, until she had at last to drag him 
away down the hill, putting a small 
plantation between him and the herd. 
Here she found a large, umbrageous 
chestnut tree, with a wooden seat round 
its trunk, and so she sat down in the 
green twilight of the leaves, while Bras 
came and put his head in her lap. Out 
beyond the shadow of the tree all the 
world lay bathed in sunlight, and a great 
silence brooded over the long undula- 
tions of the Park, where not a human 
being was within sight. How strange it 
was, she fell to thinking, that within a 
short distance there were millions of 
men and women, while here she was 
absolutely alone! Did they not care, 
then, for the sunlight and the trees and 
the sweet air ? Were they so wrapped 
up in those social observances that 
seemed to her so barren of interest ? 

“ They have a beautiful country here,” 
she said, talking in a rambling and wist- 
ful way to Bras, and scarcely noticing 
the eager light in his eyes, as if he were 
trying to understand. ‘‘They have no 
rain and no fog; almost always blue 
skies, and the clouds high up and far 
away. And the beautiful trees they 
have too ! you never saw anything like 
that in the Lewis, not even at Storno- 
way. And the people are so rich and 
beautiful in their dress, and all the day 
they have only to think how to enjoy 
themselves and what new amusement 
is for the morrow. But I think they are 
tired of having nothing to do ; or per- 
haps, you know, they are tired because 
they have nothing to fight against — no 
hard weather and hunger and poverty. 
They do not care for each other as they 
would if they were working on the same 
farm, and trying to save up for the win- 
ter ; or if they were going out to the fish- 
ing, and very glad to come home again 
from Caithness to find all the old people 
very well and the young ones ready for 


a dance and a dram, and much joy and 
laughing and telling of stories. It is a 
very great difference there will be in the 
people — very great.” 

Bras whined : perhaps he understood 
her better now that she had involun- 
tarily fallen into something of her old 
accent and habit of speech. 

“Wouldn’t you like, Bras, to be up 
in Borva again— only for this afternoon ? 
All the people would come running out ; 
and it is little Ailasa, she would put her 
arms round your neck; and old Peter 
McTavish, he would hear who it was, 
and come out of his house groping by 
the wall, and he would say, ‘ Pless me ! 
iss it you, Miss Sheila, indeed and mir- 
over ? It iss a long time since you hef 
left the Lewis.’ Yes, it is a long time — 
a long time ; and I will be almost for- 
getting what it is like sometimes when I 
try to think of it. Here it is always the 
same — the same houses, the same soft 
air, the same still sunlight, the same 
things to do and places to see — no 
storms shaking the windows or ships 
running into the harbor, and you can- 
not go down to the shore to see what 
has happened, or up the hill to look 
how the sea is raging. But it is one 
day we will go back to the Lewis — oh 
yes, we will go back to' the Lewis !” 

She rose and looked wistfully around 
her, and then turned with a sigh to 
make her way to the gates. It was with 
no especial sort of gladness that she 
thought of returning home. Here, in 
the great stillness, she had been able to 
dream of the far island which she knew, 
and to fancy herself for a few minutes 
there : now she was going back to the 
dreary monotony of her life in that 
square, and to the doubts and anxieties 
which had been suggested to her in the 
morning. The world she was about to 
enter once more seemed so much less 
homely, so much less full of interest 
and purpose, than that other and distant 
world she had been wistfully regarding 
for a time. The people around her had 
neither the joys nor the sorrows with 
which she had been taught to sympa- 
thize. Their cares seemed to her to be 
exaggerations of trifles — she could feel 


122 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


no pity for them : their satisfaction was 
derived from sources unintelligible to 
her. And the social atmosphere around 
her seemed still and close and suffo- 
cating ; so that she was like to cry out 
at times for one breath of God’s clear 
wind — for a shaft of lightning even — to 
cut through the sultry and drowsy same- 
ness of her life. 

She had almost forgotten the dog by 
her side. While sitting under the chest- 
nut she had carelessly and loosely wound 
the leash round his neck in the sem- 
blance of a collar, and when she rose 
and came away she let the dog walk by 
her side without undoing the leash and 
taking proper charge of him. She was 
thinking of far other things, indeed, 
when she was startled by some one call- 
ing to her, “Look out, miss, or you’ll 
have your dog shot !” 

She turned and caught a glimpse of 
what sent a thrill of terror to her heart. 
Bras had sneaked off from her side — 
had trotted lightly over the breckans, 
and was now in full chase of a herd of 
deer which were flying down the slope 
on the other side of the plantation. He 
rushed now at one, now at another : the 
very number of chances presented to 
him proving the safety of the whole 
herd. But as Sheila, with a swift flight 
that would have astonished most town- 
bred girls, followed the wild chase and 
came to the crest of the slope, she could 
see that the hound had at length singled 
out a particular deer — a fine buck with 
handsome horns that was making straight 
for the foot of the valley. The herd, 
that had been much scattered, were now 
drawing together again, though checking 
nothing of their speed; but this single 
buck had been driven from his compan- 
ions, and was doing his utmost to escape 
from the fangs of the powerful animal 
behind him. 

What could she do but run wildly and 
breathlessly on ? The dog was now far 
beyond the reach of her voice. She had 
no whistle. All sorts of fearful antici- 
pations rushed in on her mind, the most 
prominent of all being the anger of her 
father if Bras were shot. How could 
she go back to Borva with such a tale ? 


and how could she live in London with- 
out this companion who had come with 
her from the far North ? Then what 
terrible things were connected with the 
killing of deer in a royal park ! She re- 
membered vaguely what Mr. Ingram and 
her husband had been saying ; and while 
these things were crowding in upon her, 
she felt her strength beginning to fail, 
while both the dog and the deer had dis- 
appeared altogether from sight. 

Strange, too, that in the midst of her 
fatigue and fright, while she still man- 
aged to struggle on with a sharp pain at 
her heart and a sort of mist before her 
eyes, she had a vague consciousness 
that her husband would be deeply vex- 
ed, not by the conduct or the fate of 
Bras, but by her being the heroine of so 
mad an adventure. She knew that he 
wished her to be serious and subdued 
and proper, like the ladies whom she 
met, while an evil destiny seemed to dog 
her footsteps and precipitate her into all 
sorts of erratic mishaps and “scenes.” 
However, this adventure was likely soon 
to have an end. She could go no far- 
ther. Whatever had become of Bras, it 
was in vain for her to think of pursuing 
him. When she at length reached a 
broad and smooth road leading through 
the pasture, she could only stand still 
and press her two hands over her heart, 
while her head seemed giddy, and she 
did not see two men who had been 
standing on the road close by until they 
came up and addressed her. 

Then she started and looked round, 
finding before her two men who were ap- 
parently laborers of some sort, one of 
them having a shovel over his shoulder. 

“ Beg your pardon, miss, but wur that 
your dawg ?” 

“ Yes,” she said eagerly. “ Could you 
get him ? Did you see him go by ? Do 
you know where he is ?” 

“ Me and my mate saw him go by, sure 
enough ; but as for getting him — why the 
keepers ’ll have shot him by this time.” 

“Oh no!” cried Sheila, almost in 
tears, “they must not shoot him. It 
was my fault. I will pay them for all 
the harm he has done. Can’t you tell 
me which way he will go past ?” 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


“ I don’t think, miss,” said the spokes- 
man quite respectfully, “ as you can go 
much furder. If you would sit down 
and rest yourself, and keep an eye on 
this ’ere shovel, me and my mate will 
have a hunt arter the dawg.” 

Sheila not only accepted the offer 
gratefully, but promised to give them all 
the money she had if only they would 
bring back the dog unharmed. She 
made this offer in consequence of some 
talk between her husband and her father 
which she had overheard. Lavender 
was speaking of the civility he had fre- 
quently experienced at the hands of 
Scotch shepherds, and of the independ- 
ence with which they refused to accept 
any compensation even for services 
which cost them a good deal of time 
and trouble. Perhaps it was to please 
Sheila’s father, but at any rate, the picture 
the young man drew of the venality and 
the cupidity of folks in the South was a 
desperately dark one. Ask the name of 
a village, have your stick picked up for 
you from the pavement, get into a cab 
or get out of it, and directly there was a 
touch of the cap and an unspoken re- 
quest for coppers. Then, as the services 
rendered rose in importance, so did the 
fees — to waiters, to coachmen, to game- 
keepers. These things and many more 
sank into Sheila’s heart. She heard and 
believed, and came down to the South 
with the notion that every man and 
woman who did you the least service 
expected to be paid handsomely for 
it. What, therefore, could she give 
those two men if they brought back 
her deer-hound but all the money she 
had ? 

It was a hard thing to wait here in the 
greatest doubt and uncertainty while the 
afternoon was visibly waning. She be- 
gan to grow afraid. Perhaps the men 
had stolen the dog, and left her with this 
shovel as a blind. Her husband must 
have come home, and would be aston- 
ished and perplexed by her absence. 
Surely, he would have the sense to dine 
by himself, instead of waiting for her ; 
and she reflected with some glimpse of 
satisfaction, that she had left everything 
connected with dinner properly arranged, 


123 

so that he should have nothing to grum- 
ble at. 

“Surely,” she said to herself as she 
sat there, watching the light on the grass 
and the trees getting more and more yel- 
low — “surely I am very wicked or veiy 
wretched to think of his grumbling in 
any case. If he grumbles, it is because 
I will attend too much to the affairs of 
the house, and not amuse myself enough. 
He is very good to me, and I have no 
right to think of his grumbling. And I 
wish I cared to amuse myself more — to 
be more of a companion to him ; but it 
is so difficult among all those people.” 

The reverie was interrupted by the 
sound of footsteps on the grass behind, 
and she turned quickly to find the two 
men approaching her, one of them lead- 
ing the captive Bras by the leash. Sheila 
sprang to her feet with a great gladness. 
She did not care even to accuse the cul- 
prit, whose consciousness of guilt was 
evident in his look and in the droop of 
his tail. Bras did not once turn his eyes 
to his mistress. He hung down his head , 
while he panted rapidly, and she fancied 
she saw some smearing of blood on his 
tongue and on the side of his jaw. Her 
fears on this head were speedily con- 
firmed. 

“ I think, miss, as you’d better take 
him out o’ the Park as soon as may be, 
for he’s got a deer killed close by the 
Robin Hood Gate, in the trees there ; 
and if the keepers happen on it afore 
you leave the Park, you’ll get into 
trouble.” 

“Oh, thank you !” said Sheila, retain- 
ing her composure bravely, but with a 
terrible sinking of the heart ; “ and how 
can I get to the nearest railway station ?” 

“You’re going to London, miss?” 

“Yes.” 

“ Well, I suppose the nearest is Rich- 
mond ; but it would be quieter for you 
— don’t you see, miss ? — if you was to 
go along to the Roehampton Gate and 
go to Barnes.” 

“Will you show me the gate?” said 
Sheila, choosing the quieter route at 
once. 

But the men themselves did not at all 
like the look of accompanying her and 


124 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


this dog through the Park. Had they 
not already condoned a felony, or done 
something equally dreadful, in handing 
to her a dog that had been found keep- 
ing watch and ward over a slain buck ? 
They showed her the road to the Roe- 
hampton Gate, and then they paused 
before continuing on their journey. 

The pause meant money. Sheila took 
out her purse. There were three sov- 
ereigns and some silver in it, and the 
entire sum, in fulfillment of her promise, 
she held out to him who had so far con- 
ducted the negotiations. 

Both men looked frightened. It was 
quite clear that either good feeling or 
some indefinite fear of being implicated 
in the killing of the deer caused them to 
regard this big bribe as something they 
could not meddle with ; and at length, 
after a pause of a second or two, the 
spokesman said with great hesitation, 
“Well, miss, you’ve lcep’ your word; 
but me and my mate — well, if so be as 
it’s the same to you — ’d rather have 
summut to drink your health.” 

“ Do you think it is too much ?” 

The man looked at his neighbor, who 
nodded. 

“It was only for ketchin’ of a dawg, 
miss, don’t you see ?” he remarked slow- 
ly, as if to impress upon her that they 
had had nothing to do with the deer. 

“Will you take this, then?” and she 
offered them half a crown each. 

Their faces lightened considerably : 
they took the money, and with a formal 
expression of thanks moved off, but not 
before they had taken a glance round 
to see that no one had been a witness 
of this interview. 

And so Sheila had to walk away by 
herself, knowing that she had been guilty 
of a dreadful offence, and that at any 
moment she might be arrested by the 
officers of the law. What would the 
old King of Borva say if he saw his only 
daughter in the hands of two policemen ? 
and would not all Mr. Lavender’s fas- 
tidious and talkative and wondering 
friends pass about the newspaper report 
of her trial and conviction? A man 
was approaching her. As he drew near 
her heart failed her, for might not this 


be the mysterious George Ranger him- 
self, about whom her husband and Mr. 
Ingram had been talking ? Should she 
drop on her knees at once and confess 
her sins, and beg him to let her ofif ? If 
Duncan were with her or Mairi, or even 
old Scarlett Macdonald, she would not 
have cared so much, but it seemed so 
terrible to meet this man alone. 

However, as he drew near he did not 
seem a fierce person. He was an old 
gentleman with voluminous white hair, 
who was dressed all in black and carried 
an umbrella on this warm and bright 
afternoon. He regarded her and the 
dog in a distant and contemplative fash- 
ion, as though he would probably try to 
remember some time after that he had 
really seen them; and then he passed 
on. Sheila began to breathe more freely. 
Moreover, here was the gate, and once 
she was in the high road, who could say 
anything to her ? Tired as she was, she 
still walked rapidly on ; and in due time, 
having had to ask the way once or twice, 
she found herself at Barnes Station. 

By and by the train came in : Bras 
was committed to the care of the guard, 
and she found herself alone in a rail- 
way-carriage for the first time in her life. 
Her husband had told her that when- 
ever she felt uncertain of her where- 
abouts, if in the country, she was to ask 
for the nearest station and get a train to 
London ; if in town, she was to get into 
a cab and give the driver her address. 
And, indeed, Sheila had been so much 
agitated and perplexed during this after- 
noon that she acted in a sort of me- 
chanical fashion, and really escaped the 
nervousness which otherwise would have 
attended the novel experience of pur- | 
chasing a ticket and of arranging about j 
the carriage of a dog in the break- van. 
Even now, when she found herself trav- 
eling alone, and shortly to arrive at a 
part of London she had never seen, her 
crowding thoughts and fancies were not 
about her own situation, but about the 
reception she should receive from her 
husband. Would he be vexed with her? 
Or pity her ? Had he called with Mrs. 
Lorraine to take her somewhere, and 
found her gone ? Had he brought home 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


125 


i some bachelor friends to dinner, and 
been chagrined to find her not in the 
house ? 

It was getting dusk when the slow 
four-wheeler approached Sheila’s home. 
The hour for dinner had long gone by. 
Perhaps her husband had gone away 
I somewhere looking for her, and she 
I would find the house empty. 

But Frank Lavender came to meet his 
j wife in the hall, and said, “Where have 
I you been ?” 

She could not tell whether there was 
j anger or kindness in his voice, and she 
1 could not well see his face. She took 
1 his hand and went into the dining-room, 

| which was also dusk, and standing there 
told him all her story. 

“This is too bad, Sheila!” he said in 
j a tone of deep vexation. “ By Jove ! 
I’ll go and thrash that dog within an 
inch of his life.” 

“ No,” she said, drawing herself up ; 
j and for one brief second — could he but 
; have seen her face — there was a touch 
; of old Mackenzie’s pride and firmness 
;! about the ordinarily gentle lips. It was 
1 but for a second. She cast down her 
1 eyes and said meekly, “ I hope you won’t 
|i do that, Frank. The dog is not to blame. 

1 It was my fault.” 

“Well, really, Sheila,” he said, “you 
are very thoughtless. I wish you would 
! take some little trouble to act as other 
j women act, instead of constantly putting 
f yourself and me into the most awkward 
* positions. Suppose I had brought any 
i one home to dinner, now ? And what 
am I to say to Ingram ? for of course I 
| went direct to his lodgings when I dis- 
j covered you were nowhere to be found. 
I fancied some mad freak had taken you 
there ; and I should not have been sur- 
prised. Indeed, I don’t think I should 
(i be surprised at anything you do. Do 
you know who was in the hall when I 
I came in this afternoon ?” 

“No,” said Sheila. 

“Why that wretched old hag who 
keeps the fruit-stall. And it seems you 
gave her and all her family tea and cake 
1 in the kitchen last night.” 

“ She is a poor old woman,” said Sheila 
humbly. 


“A poor old woman !” he said impa- 
tiently. “ I have no doubt she is a lying 
old thief, who would take an umbrella 
or a coat if only she could get the chance. 
It is really too bad, Sheila, your having 
all those persons about you, and demean- 
ing yourself by attending on them. What 
must the servants think of you ?” 

“ I do not heed what any servants think 
of me,” she said. 

She was now standing erect, with her 
face quite calm. 

“Apparently not,” he said, “or you 
would not go and make yourself ridicu- 
lous before them.” 

Sheila hesitated for a moment, as if 
she did not understand ; and then she 
said, as calmly as before, but with a 
touch of indignation about the proud 
and beautiful lips, “And if I make my- 
self ridiculous by attending to poor peo- 
ple, it is not my husband who should 
tell me so.” 

She turned and walked out, and he 
was too surprised to follow her. She 
went up stairs to her own room, locked 
herself in and threw herself on the bed. 
And then all the bitterness of her heart 
rose up as if in a flood — not against him, 
but against the country in which he 
lived, and the society which had con- 
taminated him, and the ways and habits 
that seemed to create a barrier between 
herself and him, so that she was a 
stranger to him, and incapable of be- 
coming anything else. It was a crime 
that she should interest herself in the 
unfortunate creatures round about her — 
that she should talk to them as if they 
were human beings like herself, and 
have a great sympathy with their small 
hopes and aims ; but she would not have 
been led into such a crime if she had 
cultivated from her infancy upward a 
consistent self-indulgence, making her- 
self the centre of a world of mean de- 
sires and petty gratifications. And then 
she thought of the old and beautiful days 
up in the Lewis, where the young Eng- 
lish stranger seemed to approve of her 
simple ways and her charitable work, 
and where she was taught to believe that 
in order to please him she had only to 
continue to be what she was then. There 


126 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


was no great gulf of time between that 
period and this ; but what had not hap- 
pened in the interval ? She had not 
changed — at least she hoped she had 
not changed. She loved her husband 
with her whole heart and soul : her de- 
votion was as true and constant as she 
herself could have wished it to be when 
she dreamed of the duties of a wife in 
the days of her maidenhood. But all 
around her was changed. She had no 
longer the old freedom — the old delight 
in living from day to day — the active 
work, and the enjoyment of seeing where 
she could help and how she could help 
the people around her. When, as if by 
the same sort of instinct that makes a 
wild animal retain in captivity the hab- 
its which were necessary to its existence 
when it lived in freedom, she began to 
find out the circumstances of such un- 
fortunate people as were in her neigh- 
borhood, some little solace was given to 
her ; but these people were not friends 
to her, as the poor folk of Borvabost 
had been. She knew, too, that her hus- 
band would be displeased if he found 
her talking with a washerwoman over 
her family matters, or even advising one 
of her own servants about the disposal 
of her wages ; so that, while she con- 
cealed nothing from him, these things 
nevertheless had to be done exclusively 
in his absence. And was she in so doing 
really making herself ridiculous? Did 
he consider her ridiculous ? Or was it 
not merely the false and enervating in- 
fluences of the indolent society in which 
he lived that had poisoned his mind, and 
drawn him away from her as though into 
another world ? 

Alas ! if he were in this other world, 
was not she quite alone ? What com- 
panionship was there possible between 
her and the people in this new and 
strange land into which she had ven- 
tured ? As she lay on the bed, with her 
head hidden down in the darkness, the 
pathetic wail of the captive Jews seemed 
to come and go through the bitterness 
of her thoughts, like some mournful re- 
frain : “ By the rivers of Babylon, there 
we sat down ; yea we wept when we re- 
membered Zion.” She almost heard 


the words, and the reply that rose up in 
her heart was a great yearning to go 
back to her own land, so that her eyes 
were filled with tears in thinking of it, 
and she lay and sobbed there in the 
dusk. Would not the old man living 
all by himself in that lonely island be 
glad to see his little girl back again in 
the old house ? And she would sing to 
him as she used to sing, not as she had 
been singing to those people whom her 
husband knew. “For there they that 
carried us away captive required of us a 
song ; and they that wasted us required 
of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the 
songs of Zion.” And she had sung in 
the strange land, among the strange 
people, with her heart breaking with 
thoughts of the sea and the hills and the 
rude and sweet and simple ways of the 
old bygone life she had left behind her. 

“Sheila !” 

She thought it was her father calling j 
to her, and she rose with a cry of joy. 
For one wild moment she fancied that 
outside were all the people she knew — I 
Duncan and Scarlett and Mairi — and i 
that she was once more at home, with > 
the sea all around her, and the salt, I 
cold air. 

“Sheila, I want to speak to you.” 

It was her husband. She went to the 
door, opened it, and stood there pen- 
itent and with downcast face. 

“Come, you must not be silly,” he ! 
said with some kindness in his voice. ] 
“You have had no dinner. You must 
be hungry.” 

“1 do not care for any: there is no i 
use troubling the servants when I would ! 
rather lie down,” she said. 

“ The servants ! You surely don’t take 
so seriously what I said about them, I 
Sheila ? Of course you don’t need to care 
what the servants think. And in any 
case they have to bring up dinner for 
me, so you may as well come and try.” 

“Have you not had dinner?” she j 
said timidly. 

“ Do you think I could sit down and 
eat with the notion that you might have 
tumbled into the Thames or been kid- 
napped, or something ?” 

“ I am very sorry,” she said in a low 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


12 7 


voice, and in the gloom he felt his hand 
taken and carried to her lips. Then 
they went down stairs into the dining- 
room, which was now lit up by a blaze 
of gas and candles. 

During dinner of course no very con- 
fidential talking was possible, and in- 
deed Sheila had plenty to tell of her ad- 
ventures at Richmond. Lavender was 
now in a more amiable mood, and was 
disposed to look on the killing of the 
roebuck as rather a good joke. He 
complimented Sheila on her good sense 
in having gone in at the Star and Garter 
for lunch ; and altogether something like 
better relations was established between 
them. 

But when dinner was finally over and 
the servants dismissed, Lavender placed 
Sheila’s easy-chair for her as usual, drew 
his own near hers, and lit a cigarette. 

“Now, tell me, Sheila,” he said, “were 
you really vexed with me when you 
went up stairs and locked yourself in 
your room ? Did you think I meant to 
displease you or say anything harsh to 
you ?” 

“No, not any of those things,” she 
said calmly : “ I wished to be alone — to 
think over what had happened. And I 
was grieved by what you said, for I 
think you cannot help looking at many 
things not as I will look at them. That 
is all. It is my bringing up in the 
Highlands, perhaps.” 

“Do you know, Sheila, it sometimes 
occurs to me that you are not quite com- 
fortable here ? And I can’t make out 
what is the matter. I think you have 
a perverse fancy that you are different 
from the people you meet, and that you 
cannot be like them, and all that sort 
of thing. Now, dear, that is only a 
fancy. There need be no difference if 
only you will take a little trouble.” 

“Oh, Frank!” she said, going over 
and putting her hand on his shoulder, 
“ I cannot take that trouble. I cannot 
try to be like those people. And I see 
a great difference in you since you have 
come back to London, and you are get- 
ting to be like them and say the things 
they say. If I could only see you, my 
own darling, up in the Lewis again, with 

9 


rough clothes on and a gun in your hand, 
I should be happy. You were yourself 
up there, when you were helping us in 
the boat, or when you were bringing 
home the salmon, or when we were all 
together at night in the little parlor, you 
know — ” 

“ My dear, don’t get so excited. Now 
sit down, and I will tell you all about it. 
You seem to have the notion that people 
lose all their finer sentiments simply be- 
cause they don’t, in society, burst into 
raptures over them. You mustn’t im- 
agine all those people are selfish and 
callous merely because they preserve a 
decent reticence. To tell you the truth, 
that constant profession of noble feelings 
you would like to see would have some- 
thing of ostentation about it.” 

Sheila only sighed. “I do not wish 
them to be altered,” she said by and by, 
with her eyes grown pensive : “ all I 
know is, that I could not live the same 
life. And you — you seemed to be hap- 
pier up in the Highlands than you have 
ever been since.” 

“Well, you see, a man ought to be 
happy when he is enjoying a holiday in 
the country along with the girl he is en- 
gaged to. But if I had lived all my life 
killing salmon and shooting wild-duck, 
I should have grown up an ignorant 
boor, with no more sense of — ” 

He stopped, for he saw that the girl 
was thinking of her father. 

“Well, look here, Sheila. You see 
how you are placed — how we are placed, 
rather. Wouldn’t it be more sensible to 
get to understand those people you look 
askance at, and establish better relations 
with them, since you have got to live 
among them ? I can’t help thinking 
you are too much alone, and you can’t 
expect me to stay in the house always 
with you. A husband and wife cannot 
be continually in each other’s company, 
unless they want to grow heartily tired 
of each other. Now, if you would only 
lay aside those suspicions of yours, you 
would find the people just as honest and 
generous and friendly as any other sort 
of people you ever met, although they 
don’t happen to be fond of expressing 
their goodness in their talk.” 


128 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


“I have tried, dear — I will try again,” 
said Sheila. 

She resolved that she would go down 
and visit Mrs. Lavender next day, and 
try to be interested in the talk of such 
people as might be there. She would 
bring away some story about this or the 
other fashionable woman or noble lord, 
just to show her husband that she was 
doing her best to learn. She would 
drive patiently round the Park in that 
close little brougham, and listen atten- 
tively to the moralities of Marcus Aure- 
lius. She would make an appointment 
to go with Mrs. Lavender to a morning 
concert ; and she would endeavor to 
muster up courage to ask any ladies 
who might be there to lunch with her on 
that day, and go afterward to this same 
entertainment. All these things and 
many more Sheila silently vowed to her- 
self she would do, while her husband 
sat and expounded to her his theories of 
the obligations which society demanded 
of its members. 

But her plans were suddenly broken 
asunder. 

“ I met Mrs. Lorraine accidentally to- 
day,” he said. 

It was his first mention of the young 
American lady. Sheila sat in mute ex- 
pectation. 

“She always asks very kindly after 
you.” 

“ She is very kind.” 

He did not say, however, that Mrs. 
Lorraine had more than once made dis- 
tinct propositions, when in his company, 
that they should call in for Sheila and 
take her out for a drive or to a flower- 
show, or some such place, while Laven- 
der had always some excuse ready. 

“ She is going to Brighton to-morrow, 
and she was wondering whether you 
would care to run down for a day or 
two.” 

“With her?” said Sheila, recoiling 
from such a proposal instinctively. 

“Of course not. I should go. And 
then at last, you know, you would see 
the sea, about which you have been 
dreaming for ever so long.” 

The sea ! There was a magic in the 
very word that could, almost at any mo- 


I ment, summon tears into her eyes. Of 
course she accepted right gladly. If her 
husband’s duties were so pressing that 
the long-talked-of journey to Lewis and 
Borva had to be repeatedly and indef- 
initely postponed, here at least would be 
a chance of looking again at the sea — 
of drinking in the freshness and light 
and color of it — of renewing her old and 
intimate friendship with it that had been 
broken off for so long by her stay in 
this city of perpetual houses and still 
sunshine. 

“You can tell her you will go when 
you see her to-night at Lady Mary’s. 
By the way, isn’t it time for you to be- 
gin to dress ?” 

“Oh, Lady Mary’s!” repeated Sheila 
mechanically, who had quite forgotten 
about her engagement for that evening. 

“Perhaps you are too tired to go,” 
said her husband. 

She was a little tired, in truth. But 
surely, just after her promises, spoken 
and unspoken, some little effort was de- 
manded of her ; so she bravely went to 
dress, and in about three-quarters of an 
hour was ready to drive down to Curzon 
street. Her husband had never seen 
her look so pleased before in going out 
to any party. He flattered himself that 
his lecture had done her good. There 
was fair common sense in what he had 
said, and although, doubtless, a girl’s 
romanticism was a pretty thing, it would 
have to yield to the actual requirements 
of society. In time he should educate 
Sheila. 

But he did not know what brightened 
the girl’s face all that night, and put a 
new life into the beautiful eyes, so that 
even those who knew her best were 
struck by her singular beauty. It was 
the sea that was coloring Sheila’s eyes. 
The people around her, the glare of the 
candles, the hum of talking, and the 
motion of certain groups dancing over 
there in the middle of the throng,— all 
were faint and visionary, for she was 
busily wondering what the sea would be 
like the next morning, and what strange 
fancies would strike her when once more 
she walked on sand and heard the roar 
of waves. That, indeed, was the sound 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


129 


that was present in her ears while the 
music played and the people murmured 
around her. Mrs. Lorraine talked to her, 
and was surprised and amused to notice 
the eager fashion in which the girl spoke 
of their journey of the next day. The 
gentleman who took her in to supper 
found himself catechised about Brighton 
in a manner which afforded him more 
occupation than enjoyment. And when 
Sheila drove away from the house at 


two in the morning she declared to her 
husband that she had enjoyed herself 
extremely, and he was glad to hear it ; 
and she was particularly kind to himself 
in getting him his slippers, and fetching 
him that final cigarette which he always 
had on reaching home; and then she 
went off to bed to dream of ships and 
flying clouds and cold winds, and a 
great and beautiful blue plain of wave* 



PART 

CHAPTER XIV. 

DEEPER AND DEEPER. 

N EXT morning Sheila was busy with 
her preparations for departure 
when she heard a hansom drive up. 
She looked out and saw Mr. Ingram 
step out; and before he had time to 
cross the pavement she had run round 
and opened the door, and stood at the 
top of the steps to receive him. How 
often had her husband cautioned her 
not to forget herself in this monstrous 
fashion ! 

“Did you think I had run away? 
Have you come to see me ?” she said, 
with a bright, roseate gladness on her 
face which reminded him of many a 
pleasant morning in Borva. 

“ I did not think you had run away, 
for you see I have brought you some 
flowers,” he said ; but there was a sort 
of blush in the sallow face, and perhaps 
the girl had some quick fancy or sus- 
picion that he had brought this bouquet 
to prove that he knew everything was 
right, and that he expected to see her. 

It was only a part of his universal kind- 
ness and thoughtfulness, she considered. 

“Frank is up stairs,” she said, “get- 
ting ready some things to go to Brighton. 
Will you come into the breakfast-room ? 
Have you had breakfast ?” 

“Oh, you were going to Brighton ?” 
“Yes,” she said ; and somehow some- 
thing moved her to add quickly, “but 
not for long, you know. Only a few 
days. It is many a time you will have 
told me of Brighton long ago in the 
Lewis, but I cannot understand a large 
town being beside the sea, and it will 
be a great surprise to me, I am sure of 
that.” 

“Ay, Sheila,” he said, falling into the 
old habit quite naturally, “ you will find 
it different from Borvabost. You will 
have no scampering about the rocks 
with your head bare and your hair fly- 
ing about. You will have to dress more 


V 1 1. 

correctly there than here even ; and, by 
the way, you must be busy getting ready, 
so I will go.” 

“Oh no,” she said with a quick look 
of disappointment, “you will not go yet. 
If I had known you were coming — But 
it was very late when we will get home 
this morning : two o’clock it was.” 

“Another ball ?” 

“Yes,” said the girl, but not very joy- 
fully. 

“Why, Sheila,” he said with a grave 
smile on his face, “ you are becoming 
quite a woman of fashion now. And you 
know I can’t keep up an acquaintance 
with a fine lady who goes to all these 
grand places and knows all sorts of 
swell people ; so you’ll have to cut me, 
Sheila.” 

“ I hope I shall be dead before that 
time ever comes,” said the girl with a 
sudden flash of indignation in her eyes. 
Then she softened : “ But it is not kind 
of you to laugh at me.” 

“Of course I did not laugh at you,” 
he said taking both her hands in his, 
“although I used to sometimes when 
you were a little girl and talked very 
wild English. Don’t you remember how 
vexed you used to be, and how pleased 
you were when your papa turned the 
laugh against me by getting me to say 
that awful Gaelic sentence about ‘ A 
young calf ate a raw egg’ ?” 

“Can you say it now?” said Sheila, 
with her face getting bright and pleased 
again. “Try it after me. Now listen.” 

She uttered some half dozen of the 
most extraordinary sounds that any lan- 
guage ever contained, but Ingram would 
not attempt to follow her. She reproach- 
ed him with having forgotten all that he 
had learnt in Lewis, and said she should 
no longer look on him as a possible 
Highlander. 

“But what are you now?” he asked. 
“You are no longer that wild girl who 
used to run out to sea in the Maighdean- 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


mhara whenever there was the excite- 
ment of a storm coming on.” 

‘‘Many times,” she said slowly and 
wistfully, ‘‘I will wish that I could be 
that again for a little while.” 

“Don’t you enjoy, then, all those fine 
gatherings you go to ?” 

“ I try to like them.” 

“And you don’t succeed?” 

He was looking at her gravely and 
earnestly, and she turned away her 
head and did not answer. At this mo- 
ment Lavender came down stairs and 
entered the room. 

“ Hillo, Ingram, my boy ! glad to see 
you ! What pretty flowers ! It’s a pity 
we can’t take them to Brighton with us.” 

“But I intend to take them,” said 
Sheila firmly. 

“Oh, very well, if you don’t mind the 
bother,” said her husband. “I should 
have thought your hands would have 
been full : you know you’ll have to take 
everything with you you would want in 
London. You will find that Brighton 
isn’t a dirty little fishing-village in which 
you’ve only to tuck up your dress and 
run about anyhow.” 

“ I never saw a dirty little fishing-vil- 
lage,” said Sheila quietly. 

Her husband laughed : “ I meant no 
offence. I was not thinking of Borva- 
bost at all. Well, Ingram, can’t you 
run down and see us while we are at 
Brighton ?” 

“Oh do, Mr. Ingram!” said Sheila 
with quite a new interest in her face ; and 
she came forward as though she would 
have gone down on her knees and beg- 
ged this great favor of him. “ Do, Mr. 
Ingram ! We should try to amuse you 
some way, and the weather is sure to be 
fine. Shall we keep a room for you? 
Can you come on Friday and stay till 
the Monday ? It is a great difference 
there will be in the place if you come 
down.” 

Ingram looked at Sheila, and was on 
the point of promising, when Lavender 
added, “And we shall introduce you to 
that young American lady whom you 
are so anxious to meet.” 

“ Oh, is she to be there ?” he said, look- 
ing rather curiously at Lavender. 


“Yes, she and her mother. We are 
going down together.” 

“Then I’ll see whether I can in a day 
or two,” he said, but in a tone which 
pretty nearly convinced Sheila that she 
should not have her stay at Brighton 
made pleasant by the company of her 
old friend and associate. 

However, the mere anticipation of 
seeing the sea was much; and when 
they had got into a cab and were going 
down to Victoria Station, Sheila’s eyes 
were filled with a joyful anticipation. 
She had discarded altogether the de- 
scriptions of Brighton that had been 
given her. It is one thing to receive in- 
formation, and another to reproduce it 
in an imaginative picture; and in fact 
her imagination was busy with its own 
work while she sat and listened to this 
person or the other speaking of the sea- 
side town she was going to. When they 
spoke of promenades and drives and 
miles of hotels and lodging-houses, she 
was thinking of the sea-beach and of the 
boats and of the sky-line with its distant 
ships. When they told her of private 
theatricals and concerts and fancy-dress 
balls, she was thinking of being out on the 
open sea, with a light breeze filling the 
sails, and a curl of white foam rising at the 
bow and sweeping and hissing down the 
sides of the boat. She would go down 
among the fishermen when her husband 
and his friends were not by, and talk to 
them, and get to know what they sold 
their fish for down here in the South. 
She would find out what their nets cost, 
and if there was anybody in authority 
to whom they could apply for an ad- 
vance of a few pounds in case of hard 
times. Had they their cuttings of peat 
free from the nearest moss-land? and 
did they dress their fields with the thatch 
that had got saturated with the smoke ? 
Perhaps some of them could tell her 
where the crews hailed from that had 
repeatedly shot the sheep of the Flan- 
nen Isles. All these and a hundred 
other things she would get to know ; 
and she might procure and send to her 
father some rare bird or curiosity of the 
sea, that might be added to the little 
museum in which she used to sing in 


1 32 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


days gone by, when he was busy with 
his pipe and his whisky. 

“You are not much tired, then, by 
your dissipation of last night ?” said Mrs. 
Kavanagh to her at the station, as the 
slender, fair-haired, grave lady looked 
admiringly at the girl’s fresh color and 
bright gray- blue eyes. “It makes one 
envy you to see you looking so strong 
and in such good spirits.” 

“How happy you must be always!” 
said Mrs. Lorraine; and the younger 
lady had the same sweet, low and kind- 
ly voice as her mother. 

“I am very well, thank you,” said 
Sheila, blushing somewhat and not lift- 
ing her eyes, while Lavender was impa- 
tient that she had not answered with a 
laugh and some light retort, such as 
would have occurred to almost any wo- 
man in the circumstances. 

On the journey down, Lavender and 
Mrs. Lorraine, seated opposite each oth- 
er in two corner seats, kept up a con- 
tinual cross-fire of small pleasantries, in 
which the young American lady had 
distinctly the best of it, chiefly by reason 
of her perfect manner. The keenest 
thing she said was said with a look of 
great innocence and candor in the large 
gray eyes ; and then directly afterward 
she would say something very nice and 
pleasant in precisely the same voice, as 
if she could not understand that there 
was any effort on the part of either to 
assume an advantage. The mother 
sometimes turned and listened to this 
aimless talk with an amused gravity, as 
of a cat watching the gambols of a kit- 
ten, but generally she devoted herself to 
Sheila, who sat opposite her. She did 
not talk much, and Sheila was glad of 
that, but the girl felt that she was being 
observed with some little curiosity. She 
wished that Mrs. Kavanagh would turn 
those observant gray eyes of hers away 
in some other direction. Now and again 
Sheila would point out what she consid- 
ered strange or striking in the country 
outside, and for a moment the elderly 
lady would look out. But directly after- 
ward the gray eyes would come back to 
Sheila, and the girl knew they were 
upon her. At last she so persistently 


stared out of the window that she fell to 
dreaming, and all the trees and the 
meadows and the farm-houses and the 
distant heights and hollows went past 
her as though they were in a sort of 
mist, while she replied to Mrs. Kava- 
nagh’s chance remarks in a mechanical 
fashion, and could only hear as a mo- 
notonous murmur the talk of the two 
people at the other side of the carriage. 
How much of the journey did she re- 
member ? She was greatly struck by 
the amount of open land in the neigh- 
borhood of London — the commons be- 
tween Wandsworth and Streatham, and 
so forth — and she was pleased with the 
appearance of the country about Red 
Hill. For the rest, a succession of fair 
green pictures passed by her, all bathed 
in a calm, half-misty summer sunlight : 
then they pierced the chalk-hills (which 
Sheila, at first sight, fancied were of 
granite) and rumbled through the tun- 
nels. Finally, with just a glimpse of a 
great mass of gray houses filling a vast 
hollow and stretching up the bare green 
downs beyond, they found themselves 
in Brighton. 

“Well, Sheila, what do you think of 
the place ?” her husband said to her 
with a laugh as they were driving down 
the Queen’s road. 

She did not answer. 

“ It is not like Borvabost, is it ?” 

She was too bewildered to speak. She 
could only look about her with a vague 
wonder and disappointment. But sure- 
ly this great gray city was not the place 
they had come to live in ? Would it 
not disappear somehow, and they would 
get away to the sea and the rocks and 
the boats ? 

They passed into the upper part of 
West street, and here was another thor- 
oughfare, down which Sheila glanced 
with no great interest. But the next 
moment there was a quick catching of 
her breath, which almost resembled a 
sob, and a strange glad light sprang into 
her eyes. Here at last was the sea! 
Away beyond the narrow thoroughfare 
she could catch a glimpse of a great 
green plain— yellow-green it was in the 
sunlight — that the wind was whitening 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


133 


here and there with tumbling waves. 
She had not noticed that there was any 
wind in-land — there everything seemed 
asleep — but here there was a fresh breeze 
from the south, and the sea had been 
rough the day before, and now it was 
of this strange olive color, streaked with 
the white curls of foam that shone in the 
sunlight. Was there not a cold scent 
of sea-weed, too, blown up this narrow 
passage between the houses ? And now 
the carriage cut round the corner and 
whirled out into the glare of the Parade, 
and before her the great sea stretched 
out its leagues of tumbling and shining 
waves, and she heard the water roaring 
along the beach, and far away at the 
horizon she saw a phantom ship. She 
did not even look at the row of splendid 
hotels and houses, at the gayly-dressed 
folks on the pavement, at the brilliant 
flags that were flapping and fluttering 
on the New Pier and about the beach. 
It was the great world of shining water 
beyond that fascinated her, and awoke 
in her a strange yearning and longing, 
so that she did not know whether it was 
grief or joy that burned in her heart and 
blinded her eyes with tears. Mrs. Kav- 
anagh took her arm as they were going 
up the steps of the hotel, and said in a 
friendly way, “ I suppose you have some 
sad memories of the sea ?” 

“No,” said Sheila bravely, “it is al- 
ways pleasant to me to think of the sea ; 
but it is a long time since — since — ” 

“Sheila,” said her husband abruptly, 
“ do tell me if all your things are here ;” 
and then the girl turned, calm and self- 
collected, to look after rugs and boxes. 

When they were finally established in 
the hotel Lavender went off to negotiate 
for the hire of a carriage for Mrs. Kav- 
anagh during her stay, and Sheila was 
left with the two ladies. They had tea in 
their sitting-room, and they had it at one 
of the windows, so that they could look 
out on the stream of people and car- 
riages now beginning to flow by in the 
clear yellow light of the afternoon. But 
neither the people nor the carriages had 
much interest for Sheila, who, indeed, 
sat for the most part silent, intently 
watching the various boats that were 


putting out or coming in, and busy with 
conjectures which she knew there was 
no use placing before her two com- 
panions. 

“ Brighton seems to surprise you very 
much,” said Mrs. Lorraine. 

“Yes,” said Sheila, “I have been told 
all about it, but you will forget all that ; 
and this is very different from the sea at 
home — at my home.” 

“Your home is in London now,” said 
the elder lady with a smile. 

“ Oh no !” said Sheila, most anxiously 
and earnestly. “London, that is net 
our home at all. We live there for a 
time — that will be quite necessary — but 
we shall go back to the Lewis some day 
soon — not to stay altogether, but enough 
to make it as much our home as London.” 

“ How do you think Mr. Lavender will 
enjoy living in the Hebrides ?” said Mrs. 
Lorraine with a look of innocent and 
friendly inquiry in her eyes. 

“ It was many a time that he has said 
he never liked any place so much,” said 
Sheila with something of a blush ; and 
then she added with growing courage, 
“for you must not think he is always 
like what he is here. Oh no ! When 
he is in the Highlands there is no day 
that is nearly long enough for what has 
to be done in it ; and he is up very early, 
and away to the hills or the loch with a 
gun or a salmon-rod. He can catch the 
salmon very well — oh, very well for one 
that is not accustomed — and he will 
shoot as well as any one that is in the 
island, except my papa. It is a great 
deal to do there will be in the island, 
and plenty of amusement ; and there is 
not much chance — not any whatever — 
of his being lonely or tired when we go 
to live in the Lewis.” 

Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter were 
both amused and pleased by the earnest 
and rapid fashion in which Sheila talked. 
They had generally considered her to be 
a trifle shy and silent, not knowing how 
afraid she was of using wrong idioms or 
pronunciations ; but here was one sub- 
ject on which her heart was set, and she 
had no more thought as to whether she 
said like-a-ness or likeness , or whether 
she said gyarden or garden. Indeed, 


134 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


she forgot more than that. She was 
somewhat excited by the presence of the 
sea and the well-remembered sound of 
the waves ; and she was pleased to talk 
about her life in the North, and about 
her husband’s stay there, and how they 
should pass the time when she returned 
to Borva. She neglected altogether Lav- 
ender’s injunctions that she should not 
talk about fishing or cooking or farming 
to his friends. She incidentally reveal- 
ed to Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter 
a great deal more about the household 
at Borva than he would have wished to 
be known. For how could they under- 
stand about his wife having her own 
cousin to serve at table ? and what would 
they think of a young lady who was 
proud of making her father’s shirts? 
Whatever these two ladies may have 
thought, they were very obviously inter- 
ested, and if they were amused, it was 
in a far from unfriendly fashion. Mrs. 
Lorraine professed herself quite charmed 
v/ith Sheila’s descriptions of her island- 
life, and wished she could go up to Lewis 
to see all these strange things. But when 
she spoke of visiting the island when 
Sheila and her husband were staying 
there, Sheila was not nearly so ready to 
offer her a welcome as the daughter of 
a hospitable old Highlandman ought to 
have been. 

“And will you go out in a boat now ?” 
said Sheila, looking down to the beach. 

“In a boat! What sort of boat?” 
said Mrs. Kavanagh. 

“Any one of those little sailing boats : 
it is very good boats they are, as far as 
I can see.” 

“No, thank you,” said the elder lady 
with a smile. “ I am not fond of small 
fooats, and the company of the men who 
go with you might be a little objection- 
able, I should fancy.” 

“But you need not take any men,” 
said Sheila : “the sailing of one of those 
little boats, it is very simple.” 

“ Do you mean to say you could man- 
age the boat by yourself?” 

“Oh yes! It is very simple. And my 
husband, he will help me.” 

“ And what would you do if you went 
out ?” 


“We might try the fishing. I do not 
see where the rocks are, but we would 
go off the rocks and put down the an- 
chor and try the lines. You would have 
some ferry good fish for breakfast in the 
morning.” 

“My dear child,” said Mrs. Kava- 
nagh, “ you don’t know what you propose 
to us. To go and roll about in an open 
boat in these waves — we should be ill in 
five minutes. But I suppose you don’t 
know what sea-sickness is ?” 

“No,” said Sheila, “but I will hear 
my husband speak of it often. And it 
is only in crossing the Channel that 
people will get sick.” 

“Why, this is the Channel.” 

Sheila stared. Then she endeavored 
to recall her geography. Of course this 
must be a part of the Channel, but if 
the people in the South became ill in 
this weather, they must be rather feeble 
creatures. Her speculations on this 
point were cut short by the entrance of 
her husband, who came to announce 
that he had not only secured a carriage 
for a month, but that it would be round 
at the hotel door in half an hour ; where- 
upon the two American ladies said they 
would be ready, and left the room. 

“Now go off and get dressed, Sheila,” 
said Lavender. 

She stood for a moment irresolute. 

“ If you wouldn’t mind,” she said after 
a moment’s hesitation — “if you would 
allow me to go by myself— if you would 
go to the driving, and let me go down 
to the shore !” 

“Oh, nonsense!” he said. "You will 
have people fancying you are only a 
school-girl. How can you go down to 
the beach by yourself among all those 
loafing vagabonds, who would pick your 
pocket or throw stones at you? You 
must behave like an ordinary Christian : 
now do, like a good girl, get dressed 
and submit to the restraints of civilized 
life. It won’t hurt you much.” 

So she left, to lay aside with some re- 
gret her rough blue dress, and he went 
down stairs to see about ordering dinner. 

Had she come down to the sea, then, 
only to live the life that had nearly 
1 oken her heart in London ? It seem- 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


*35 


ed so. They drove up and down the 
Parade for about an hour and a half, 
and the roar of carriages drowned the 
rush of the waves. Then they dined 
in the quiet of this still summer evening, 
and she could only see the sea as a dis- 
tant and silent picture through the win- 
dows, while the talk of her companions 
was either about the people whom they 
had seen while xlriving, or about matters 
of which she knew nothing. Then the 
blinds were drawn and candles lit, and 
still their conversation murmured around 
her unheeding ears. After dinner her 
husband went down to the smoking- 
room of the hotel to have a cigar, and 
she was left with Mrs. Kavanagh and 
her daughter. She went to the window 
and looked through a chink in the Vene- 
tian blinds. There was a beautiful clear 
twilight abroad, the darkness was still 
of a soft gray, and up in the pale yellow- 
green of the sky a large planet burned 
and throbbed. Soon the sea and the 
sky would darken, the stars would come 
forth in thousands and tens of thou- 
sands, and the moving water would be 
struck with a million trembling spots of 
silver as the waves came onward to the 
beach. 

“Mayn’t we go out for a walk till 
Frank has finished his cigar?” said 
Sheila. 

“You couldn’t go out walking at this 
time of night,” said Mrs. Kavanagh in 
a kindly way: “you would meet the 
most unpleasant persons. Besides, going 
out into the night air would be most 
dangerous.” . 

“ It is a beautiful night,” said Sheila 
with a sigh. She was still standing at 
the window. 

“ Come,” said Mrs. Kavanagh, going 
over to her and putting her hand in her 
arm, “ we cannot have any moping, you 
know. You must be content to be dull 
with us for one night ; and after to-night 
we shall see what we can do to amuse 
you.” 

“ Oh, but I don’t want to be amused !” 
cried Sheila almost in terror, for some 
vision flashed on her mind of a series 
of parties. “I would much rather be 
left alone and allowed to go about by 


myself. But it is very kind of you,” she 
hastily added, fancying that her speech 
had been somewhat ungracious — “it is 
very kind of you indeed.” 

“ Come, I promised to teach you crib- 
bage, didn’t I ?” 

“Yes,” said Sheila with much resigna- 
tion ; and she walked to the table and 
sat down. 

Perhaps, after all, she could have spent 
the rest of the evening with some little 
equanimity in patiently trying to learn 
this game, in which she had no interest 
whatever, but her thoughts and fancies 
were soon drawn away from cribbage. 
Her husband returned. Mrs. Lorraine 
had been for some little time at the big 
piano at the other side of the room, 
amusing herself by playing snatches of 
anything she happened to remember, but 
when Mr. Lavender returned she seem- 
ed to wake up. He went over to her 
and sat down by the piano. 

“Here,” she said, “I have all the duets 
and songs you spoke of, and I am quite 
delighted with those I have tried. I wish 
mamma would sing a second to me : 
how can one learn without practicing? 
And there are some of those duets I 
really should like to learn after what 
you said of them.” 

“ Shall I become a substitute for your 
mamma ?” he said. 

“And sing the second, so that I may 
practice ? Your cigar must have left 
you in a very amiable mood." 

“Well, suppose we try,” he said ; and 
he proceeded to open out the roll of 
music which she had brought down. 

“ Which shall we take first ?” he asked. 

“ It does not much matter,” she an- 
swered indifferently, and indeed she 
took up one of the duets by haphazard. 

What was it made Mrs. Kavanagh’s 
companion suddenly lift her eyes from 
the cribbage-board and look with sur- 
prise to the other end of the room ? She 
had recognized the little prelude to one 
of her own duets, and it was being play- 
ed by Mrs. Lorraine. And it was Mrs. 
Lorraine who began to sing in a sweet, 
expressive and well-trained voice of no 
great power — 

Love in thine eyes for ever plays ; 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


136 

and it was she to whom the answer was 
given — 

He in thy snowy bosom strays ; 

and then, Sheila, sitting stupefied and 
pained and confused, heard them sing 
together — 

He makes thy rosy lips his care, 

And walks the mazes of thy hair. 

She had not heard the short conversa- 
tion which had introduced this music ; 
and she could not tell but that her hus- 
band had been practicing these duets — 
her duets — with some one else. For 
presently they sang “When the rosy 
morn appearing,” and “I would that 
my love could silently,” and others, all 
of them, in Sheila’s eyes, sacred to the 
time when she and Lavender used to sit 
in the little room at Borva. It was no 
consolation to her that Mrs. Lorraine 
had but an imperfect acquaintance with 
them ; that oftentimes she stumbled and 
went back over a bit of the accompani- 
ment ; that her voice was far from being 
striking. Lavender, at all events, seem- 
ed to heed none of these things* It was 
not as a music-master that he sang with 
her. He put as much expression of love 
into his voice as ever he had done in 
the old days when he sang with his 
future bride. And it seemed so cruel 
that this woman should have taken 
Sheila’s own duets from her to sing be- 
fore her with her own husband. 

Sheila learnt little more cribbage that 
evening. Mrs. Kavanagh could not un- 
derstand how her pupil had become em- 
barrassed, inattentive, and even sad, and 
asked her if she was tired. Sheila said 
she was very tired and would go. And 
when she got her candle, Mrs. Lorraine 
and Lavender had just discovered an- 
other duet which they felt bound to try 
together as the last. 

This was not the first time she had 
been more or less vaguely pained by 
her husband’s attentions to this young 
American lady ; and yet she would not 
admit to herself that he was any way 
in the wrong. She would entertain no 
suspicion of him. She would have no 
jealousy in her heart, for how could 
jealousy exist with a perfect faith ? And 
so she had repeatedly reasoned herself 


out of these tentative feelings, and re- 
solved that she would do neither her 
husband nor Mrs. Lorraine the injustice 
of being vexed with them. So it was 
now. What more natural than that 
Frank should recommend to any friend 
the duets of which he was particularly 
fond ? What more natural than that 
this young lady should wish to show her 
appreciation of those songs by singing 
them ? and who was to sing with her 
but he ? Sheila would have no suspicion 
of either; and so she came down next 
morning determined to be very friendly 
with Mrs. Lorraine. 

But that forenoon another thing oc- 
curred which nearly broke down all her 
resolves. 

“Sheila,” said her husband, “I don’t 
think I ever asked you whether you 
rode.” 

“ I used to ride many times at home,” 
she said. 

“But I suppose you’d rather not ride 
here,” he said. “Mrs. Lorraine and I 
propose to go out presently: you’ll be 
able to amuse yourself somehow till we 
come back.” 

Mrs. Lorraine had, indeed, gone to 
put on her habit, and her mother was 
with her. 

“I suppose I may go out,” said Sheila. 
“ It is so very dull in-doors, and Mrs. 
Kavanagh is afraid of the east wind, 
and she is not going out.” 

“Well, there’s no harm in your going 
out,” answered Lavender, “but I should 
have thought you’d have liked the com- 
fort of watching the people pass, from 
the window.” 

She said nothing, but went off to her 
own room and dressed to go out. Why 
she knew not, but she felt she would 
rather not see her husband and Mrs. 
Lorraine start from the hotel door. She 
stole down stairs without going into the 
sitting-room, and then, going through 
the great hall and down the steps, found 
herself free and alone in Brighton. 

It was a beautiful, bright, clear day, 
though the wind was a trifle chilly, and 
all around her there was a sense of space 
and light and motion in the shining 
skies, the far clouds and the heaving 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


1 37 


and noisy sea. Yet she had none of 
the gladness of heart with which she 
used to rush out of the house at Borva 
to drink in the fresh, salt air and feel 
the sunlight on her cheeks. She walked 
away, with her face wistful and pensive, 
along the King’s road, scarcely seeing 
any of the people who passed her ; and 
the noise of the crowd and of the waves 
hummed in her ears in a distant fashion, 
even as she walked along the wooden 
railing over the beach. She stopped 
and watched some men putting off a 
heavy fishing-boat, and she still stood 
and looked long after the boat was 
launched. She would not confess to 
herself that she felt lonely and miser- 
able : it was the sight of the sea that 
was melancholy. It seemed so different 
from the sea off Borva, that had always 
to her a familiar and friendly look, even 
when it was raging and rushing before 
a south-west wind. Here this sea look- 
ed vast and calm and sad, and the sound 
of it was not pleasant to her ears, as was 
the sound of the waves on the rocks at 
Borva. She walked on, in a blind and 
unthinking fashion, until she had got 
far up the Parade, and could see the 
long line of monotonous white cliff meet- 
ing the dull blue plain of the waves until 
both disappeared in the horizon. 

She returned to the King’s road a 
trifle tired, and sat down on one of the 
benches there. The passing of the peo- 
ple would amuse her ; and now the pave- 
ment was thronged with a crowd of gay- 
ly-dressed folks, and the centre of the 
thoroughfare brisk with the constant 
going and coming of riders. She saw 
strange old women, painted, powdered 
and bewigged in hideous imitation of 
youth, pounding up and down the level 
street, and she wondered what wild hal- 
lucinations possessed the brains of these 
poor creatures. She saw troops of beau- 
tiful young girls, with flowing hair, clear 
eyes and bright complexions, riding by, 
a goodly company, under charge of a 
riding-mistress, and the world seemed 
to grow sweeter when they came into 
view. But while she was vaguely gazing 
and wondering and speculating her eyes 
were suddenly caught by two riders 


whose appearance sent a throb to her 
heart. Frank Lavender rode well, so 
did Mrs. Lorraine ; and, though they 
were paying no particular attention to 
the crowd of passers-by, they doubtless 
knew that they could challenge criticism 
with an easy confidence. They were 
laughing and talking to each other as 
they went rapidly by : neither of them 
saw Sheila. The girl did not look after 
them. She rose and \Valked in the other 
direction, with a greater pain at her heart 
than had been there for many a day. 

What was this crowd? Some dozen 
or so of people were standing round a 
small girl, who, accompanied by a man, 
was playing a violin, and playing it very 
well, too. But it was not the music that 
attracted Sheila to the child, but partly 
that there was a look about the timid, 
pretty face and the modest and honest 
eyes that reminded her of little Ailasa, 
and partly because, just at this moment, 
her heart seemed to be strangely sen- 
sitive and sympathetic. She took no 
thought of the people looking on. She 
went forward to the edge of the pave- 
ment, and found that the small girl and 
her companion were about to go away. 
Sheila stopped the man. 

“ Will you let your little girl come with 
me into this shop ?” 

It was a confectioner’s shop. 

“We were going home to dinner,’’ 
said the man, while the small girl looked 
up with wondering eyes. 

“Will you let her have dinner with 
me, and you will come back in half an 
hour ?’’ 

The man looked at the little girl : he 
seemed to be really fond of her, and 
saw that she was very willing to go. 
Sheila took her hand and led her into 
the confectioner’s shop, putting her violin 
on one of the small marble tables while 
they sat down at another. She was 
probably not aware that two or three 
idlers had followed them, and were 
staring with might and main in at the 
door of the shop. 

What could this child have thought 
of the beautiful and yet sad-eyed lady 
who was so kind to her, who got her all 
sorts of things with her own hands, and 


138 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


asked her all manner of questions in a 
low, gentle and sweet voice? There 
was not much in Sheila’s appearance to 
provoke fear or awe. The little girl, shy 
at first, got to be a little more frank, and 
told her hostess when she rose in the 
morning, how she practiced, the number 
of hours they were out during the day, 
and many of the small incidents of her 
daily life. She had been photographed 
too, and her photograph was sold in one 
of the shops. She was very well con- 
tent : she liked playing, the people were 
kind to her, and she did not often get 
tired. 

“Then I shall see you often if I stay 
in Brighton ?’’ said Sheila. 

“We go out every day when it does 
not rain very hard.” 

“ Perhaps some wet day you will come 
and see me, and you will have some tea 
with me : would you like that ?” 

“ Yes, very much,” said the small mu- 
sician, looking up frankly. 

Just at this moment, the half hour 
having fully expired, the man appeared 
at the door. 

“Don’t hurry,” said Sheila to the 
little girl: “sit still and drink out the 
lemonade; then I will give you some 
little parcels which you must put in your 
pocket.” 

She was about to rise to go to the 
counter when she suddenly met the eyes 
of her husband, who was calmly staring 
at her. He had come out, after their 
ride, with Mrs. Lorraine to have a stroll 
up and down the pavements, and had, 
in looking in at the various shops, 
caught sight of Sheila quietly having 
luncheon with this girl whom she had 
picked up in the streets. 

“Did you ever see the like of that?” 
he said to Mrs. Lorraine. “In open 
day, with people staring in, and she has 
not even taken the trouble to put the 
violin out of sight !” 

“The poor child means no harm,” 
said his companion. 

“Well, we must get her out of this 
somehow,” he said ; and so they entered 
the shop. 

Sheila knew she was guilty the mo- 
ment she met her husband’s look, though 


she had never dreamed of it before. 
She had, indeed, acted quite thought- 
lessly — perhaps chiefly moved by a de- 
sire to speak to some one and to befriend 
some one in her own loneliness. 

“ Hadn’t you better let this little girl 
go ?” said Lavender to Sheila somewhat 
coldly as soon as he had ordered an ice 
for his companion. 

“When she has finished her lemon- 
ade she will go,” said Sheila meekly. 
" But I have to buy some things for her 
first.” 

“You have got a whole lot of people 
round the door,” he said. 

“ It is very kind of the people to wait 
for her,” answered Sheila with the same 
composure. “We have been here half 
an hour. I suppose they will like her 
music very much.” 

The little violinist was now taken to 
the counter, and her pockets stuffed with 
packages of sugared fruits and other 
deadly delicacies : then she was permit- 
ted to go with half a crown in her hand. 
Mrs. Lorraine patted her shoulder in 
passing, and said she was a pretty little 
thing. 

They went home to luncheon. Noth- 
ing wa^ said about the incident of the 
forenoon, except that Lavender com- 
plained to Mrs. Kavanagh, in a humor- 
ous way, that his wife had a most extra- 
ordinary fondness for beggars, and that 
he never went home of an evening with- 
out expecting to find her dining with the 
nearest scavenger and his family. Lav- 
ender, indeed, was in an amiable frame 
of mind at this meal (during the prog- 
ress of which Sheila sat by the window, 
of course, for she had already lunched 
in company with the tiny violinist), and 
was bent on making himself as agree- 
able as possible to his two companions. 
Their talk had drifted toward the wan- 
derings of the two ladies on the Conti- 
nent ; from that to the Niebelungen fres- 
coes in Munich ; from that to the Nie- 
belungen itself, and then, by easy tran- 
sition, to the ballads of Uhland and 
Heine. Lavender was in one of his 
most impulsive and brilliant moods — 
gay and jocular, tender and sympathetic 
by turns, and so obviously sincere in all 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


139 


that his listeners were delighted with his 
speeches and assertions and stories, and 
believed them as implicitly as he did 
himself. Sheila, sitting at a distance, 
saw and heard, and could not help re- 
calling many an evening in the far North 
when Lavender used to fascinate every 
one around him by the infection of his 
warm and poetic enthusiasm. How he 
talked, too — telling the stories of these 
quaint and pathetic ballads in his own 
rough - and - ready translations — while 
there was no self-consciousness in his 
face, but a thorough warmth of earnest- 
ness ; and sometimes, too, she would 
notice a quiver of the under lip that she 
knew of old, when some pathetic point 
or phrase had to be indicated rather 
than described. He was drawing pic- 
tures for them as well as telling stories 
— of the three students entering the 
room in which the landlady’s daughter 
lay dead — of Barbarossa in his cave — 
of the child who used to look up at 
Heine as he passed her in the street, 
awestricken by his pale and strange 
face — of the last of the band of com- 
panions who sat in the solitary room in 
which they had sat, and drank to their 
memory — of the king of Thule, and the 
deserter from Strasburg, and a thousand 
others. 

“But is ther£ any of them — is there 
anything in the world — more pitiable 
than that pilgrimage to Kevlaar?” he 
said. “You know it, of course. No? 
Oh, you must, surely. Don’t you re- 
member the mother who stood by the 
bedside of her sick son, and asked him 
whether he would not rise to see the 
great procession go by the window ; and 
he tells her that he cannot, he is so ill : 
his heart is breaking for thinking of his 
dead Gretchen ? You know the story, 
Sheila. The mother begs him to rise 
and come with her, and they will join 
the band of pilgrims going to Kevlaar, 
to be healed there of their wounds by 
the Mother of God. Then you find 
them at Kevlaar, and all the maimed 
and the lame people have come to the 
shrine ; and whichever limb is diseased, 
they make a waxen image of that and 
lay it on the altar, and then they are 


healed. Well, the mother of this poor 
lad takes wax and forms a heart out of 
it, and says to her son, ‘ Take that to 
the Mother of God, and she will heal 
your pain.’ Sighing, he takes the wax 
heart in his hand, and, sighing, he goes 
to the shrine ; and there, with tears run- 
ning down his face, he says, ‘ O beautiful 
Queen of Heaven, I am come to tell you 
my grief. I lived with my mother in 
Cologne: near us lived Gretchen, who 
is dead now. Blessed Mary, I bring 
you this wax heart : heal the wound in 
my heart.’ And then — and then—” 

Sheila saw his lip tremble. But he 
frowned, and said impatiently, “What a 
shame it is to destroy such a beautiful 
story! You can have no idea of it — of 
its simplicity and tenderness — ” 

“But pray let us hear the rest of it,” 
said Mrs. Lorraine gently. 

“Well, the last scene, you know, is a 
small chamber, and the mother and her 
sick son are asleep. The Blessed Mary 
glides into the chamber and bends over 
the young man, and puts her hand 
lightly on his heart. Then she smiles 
and disappears. The unhappy mother 
has seen all this in a dream, and now 
shq* awakes, for the dogs are barking 
loudly. The mother goes over to the 
bed of her son, and Jhe is dead, and 
the morning light totrimes his pale face. 
And then the mother folds her hands, 
and safs— ” 

He rose hastily with a gesture of fret- 
fulness, and walked over to the win- 
dow at which Sheila sat and'looked 
out. She put her hand up to his : he 
took it. 

“The next time I try to translate 
Heine,” he said, making it appear that 
he had broken off through vexation, 
“something strange will happen.” 

“It is a beautiful story,” said Mrs. 
Lorraine, who had herself been crying 
a little bit in a covert way : “ I wonder I 
have not seen a translation of it. Come, 
mamma, Lady Leveret said we were not 
to be after four.” 

So they rose and left, and Sheila was 
alone with her husband, and still hold- 
ing his hand. She looked up at him 
timidly, wondering, perhaps, in her sim- 


140 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


pie way, as to whether she should not 
now pour out her heart to him, and tell 
him all her griefs and fears and yearn- 
ings. He had obviously been deeply 
moved by the story he had told so rough- 
ly : surely now was a good opportunity 
of appealing to him, and begging for 
sympathy and compassion. 

“Frank,” she said, and she rose and 
came close, and bent down her head to 
hide the color in her face. 

“Well ?” he answered a trifle coldly. 

“You won’t be vexed with me,” she 
said in a low voice, and with her heart 
beginning to beat rapidly. 

“Vexed with you about what?” he 
said abruptly. 

Alas ! all her hopes had fled. She 
shrank from the cold stare with which 
she knew he was regarding her. She 
felt it to be impossible that she should 
place before him those confidences with 
which she had approached him ; and so, 
with a great effort, she merely said, “Are 
we to go to Lady Leveret’s ?” 

“Of course we are,” he said, “unless 
you would rather go and see some blind 
fiddler or beggar. It is really too bad 
of you, Sheila, to be so forgetful : what 
if Lady Leveret, for example, had come 
into that shop ? It seems to me you are 
never satisfied with meeting the people 
you ought to meet, but that you must 
go and associate with all the wretched 
cripples and beggars you can find. You 
should remember you are a woman, and 
not a child — that people will talk about 
what you do if you go on in this mad 
way. Do you ever see Mrs. Kavanagh 
or her daughter do any of these things ?” 

Sheila had let go his hand : her eyes 
were still turned toward the ground. 
She had fancied that a little of that 
emotion that had been awakened in him 
by the story of the German mother and 
her son might warm his heart toward 
herself, and render it possible for her to 
talk to him frankly about all that she 
had been dimly thinking, and more 
definitely suffering. She was mistaken : 
that was all. 

“I will try to do better, and please 
you,” she said; and then she went 
away. 


CHAPTER XV. 

t A FRIEND IN NEED. 

Was it a delusion that had grown up 
in the girl’s mind, and now held full 
possession of it — that she was in a world 
with which she had no sympathy, that 
she should never be able to find a home 
there, that the influences of it were grad- 
ually and surely stealing from her her 
husband’s love and confidence ? Or was 
this longing to get away from the people 
and the circumstances that surrounded 
her but the unconscious promptings of 
an incipient jealousy ? She did not 
question her own mind closely on these 
points. She only vaguely knew that 
she was miserable, and that she could 
not tell her husband of the weight that 
pressed on her heart. 

Here, too, as they drove along to have 
tea with a certain Lady Leveret, who 
was one of Lavender’s especial patrons, 
and to whom he had introduced Mrs. 
Kavanagh and her daughter, Sheila felt 
that she was a stranger, an interloper, a 
“third wheel to the cart.” She scarcely 
spoke a word. She looked at the sea, 
but she had almost grown to regard that 
great plain of smooth water as a melan- 
choly and monotonous thing — not the 
bright and boisterous sea of her youth, 
with its winding channels, its secret bays 
and rocks, its salt winds and rushing 
waves. She was disappointed with the 
perpetual wall of white cliff, where she 
had expected to see something of the 
black and rugged shore of the North. 
She had as yet made no acquaintance 
with the sea-life of the place : she did 
not know where the curers lived ; wheth- 
er they gave the fishermen credit and 
cheated them ; whether the people about 
here made any use of the back of the 
dog-fish, or could, in hard seasons, cook 
any of the wild-fowl ; what the ling and 
the cod and the skate fetched ; where the 
wives and daughters sat and spun and 
carded their wool ; whether they knew 
how to make a good dish of cockles 
boiled in milk. She smiled to herself 
when she thought of asking Mrs. Lor- 
raine about any such things; but she 
still cherished some vague hope that be- 
fore she left Brighton she would have 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


some little chance of getting near to the 
sea and learning a little of the sea-life 
down in the South. 

And as they drove along the King’s 
road on this afternoon she suddenly 
called out, “Look, Frank!” 

On the steps of the Old Ship Hotel 
stood a small man with a brown face, 
a brown beard and a beaver hat, who 
was calmly smoking a wooden pipe, and 
looking at an old woman selling oranges 
in front of him. 

“ It is Mr. Ingram,” said Sheila. 

“Which is Mr. Ingram?” asked Mrs. 
Lorraine with considerable interest, for 
she had often heard Lavender speak of 
his friend. “ Not that little man ?” 

“Yes,” said Lavender coldly : he could 
have wished that Ingram had had some 
little more regard for appearances in so 
public a place as the main thoroughfare 
of Brighton. 

"Won’t you stop and speak to him ?” 
said Sheila with great surprise. 

“We are late already,” said her hus- 
band. “But if you would rather go back 
and speak to him than go on with us, 
you may.” 

Sheila said nothing more; and so 
they drove on to the end of the Parade, 
where Lady Leveret held possession of 
a big white house with pillars overlook- 
ing the broad street and the sea. 

But next morning she said to him, “ I 
suppose you will be riding with Mrs. 
Lorraine this morning ?” 

“I suppose so.” 

“ I should like to go and see Mr. In- 
gram, if he is still there,” she said. 

“ Ladies don’t generally call at hotels 
and ask to see gentlemen ; but of course 
you don’t care for that.” 

“ I shall not go if you do not wish me.” 

“ Oh, nonsense ! You may as well go. 
What is the use of professing to keep 
observances that you don’t understand ? 
And it will be some amusement for you, 
for I dare say both of you will immedi- 
ately go and ask some old cab-driver to 
have luncheon with you, or buy a nose- 
gay of flowers for his horse.” 

The permission was not very gracious, 
but Sheila accepted it, and very shortly 
after breakfast she changed her dress 


141 

and went out. How pleasant it was to 
know that she was going to see her old 
friend to whom she could talk freely ! 
The morning seemed to know of her 
gladness, and to share in it, for there 
was a brisk southerly breeze blowing 
fresh in from the sea, and the waves 
were leaping white in the sunlight. 
There was no more sluggishness in the 
air or the gray sky or the leaden plain 
of the sea. Sheila knew that the blood 
was mantling in her cheeks; that her 
heart was full of joy; that her whole 
frame so tingled with life and spirit that, 
had she been in Borva, she would have 
challenged her deer-hound to a race, 
and fled down the side of the hill with 
him to the small bay of white sand be- 
low the house. She did not pause for 
a minute when she reached the hotel. 
She went up the steps, opened the door 
and entered the square hall. There was 
an odor of tobacco in the place, and 
several gentlemen standing about rather 
confused her, for she had to glance at 
them in looking for a waiter. Another 
minute would probably have found her 
a trifle embarrassed, but that, just at this 
crisis, she saw Ingram himself come out 
of a room with a cigarette in his hand. 
He threw away the cigarette, and came 
forward to her with amazement in his 
eyes. 

“Where is Mr. Lavender? Has he 
gone into the smoking-room for me ?” 
he asked. 

“He is not here,” said Sheila. “I 
have come for you by myself.” 

For a moment, too, Ingram felt the 
eyes of the men on him, but directly 
he said with a fine air of carelessness, 
“Well, that is very good of you. Shall 
we go out for a stroll until your husband 
comes ?” 

So he opened the door and followed 
her outside into the fresh air and the 
roar of the waves. 

“Well, Sheila,” he said, “this is very 
good of you, really : where is Mr. Lav- 
ender ?” 

“He generally rides with Mrs. Lor- 
raine in the morning.” 

“And what do you do ?” 

“ I sit at the window.” 


142 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


“ Don’t you go boating ?” 

“No, I have not been in a boat. They 
do not care for it. And yesterday it was 
a letter to papa I was writing, and I 
could tell him nothing about the people 
here or the fishing.” 

“ But you could not in any case, Sheila. 
I suppose you would like to know what 
they pay for their lines, and how they 
dye their wool, and so on ; but you would 
find the fishermen here don’t live in that 
way at all. They are all civilized, you 
know. They buy their clothing in the 
shops. They never eat any sort of sea- 
weed, or dye with it, either. However, 
I will tell you all about it by and by. 
At present I suppose you are returning 
to your hotel.” 

A quick look of pain and disappoint- 
ment passed over her face as she turned 
to him for a moment with something of 
entreaty in her eyes. 

“I came to see you,” she said. “But 
perhaps you have an engagement. I do 
not wish to take up any of your time : 
if you please I will go back alone to — ” 

“Now, Sheila,” he said with a smile, 
and with the old friendly look she knew 
so well, “ you must not talk like that to 
me. I won’t have it. You know I came 
down to Brighton because you asked me 
to come ; and my time is altogether at 
your service.” 

“And you have no engageipent just 
now ?” said Sheila with her face bright- 
ening. 

“No.” 

“ And you will take me down to the 
shore to see the boats and the nets ? Or 
could we go out and run along the coast 
for a few miles ? It is a very good wind.” 

“Oh, I should be very glad,” said In- 
gram slowly. “ I should be delighted. 
But, you see, wouldn’t your husband 
think it — wouldn’t he, you know — 
wouldn’t it seem just a little odd to him 
if you were to go away like that ?” 

“ He is to go riding with Mrs. Lor- 
raine,” said Sheila quite simply. “He 
does not want me.” 

“Of course you told him you were 
coming to see — you were going to call 
at the Old Ship ?” 

“ Yes. And I am sure he would not 


be surprised if I did not return for a long 
time.” 

“Are you quite sure, Sheila?” 

“Yes, I am quite sure.” 

“Very well. Now I shall tell you 
what I am going to do with you. I 
shall first go and bribe some mercenary 
boatman to let us have one of those 
small sailing boats committed to our 
own exclusive charge. I shall consti- 
tute you skipper and pilot of the craft, 
and hold you responsible for my safety. 
I shall smoke a pipe to prepare me for 
whatever may befall.” 

“Oh no,” said Sheila. “You must 
work very hard, and 1 will see if you 
remember all that I taught you in the 
Lewis. And if we can have some long 
lines, we might get some fish. Will 
they pay more than thirty shillings for 
their long lines in this country ?” 

“I don’t know,” said Ingram. "I 
believe most of the fishermen here live 
upon the shillings they get from passers- 
by after a little conversation about the 
weather and their hard lot in life ; so 
that one doesn’t talk to .them more than 
one can help.” 

“ But why do they need the money ? 
Are there no fish ?” 

“ I don’t know that, either. I suppose 
there is some good fishing in the winter, 
and sometimes in the summer they get 
some big shoals of mackerel.” 

“ It was a letter I had last week from 
the sister of one of the men of the 
Nighean-dubh, and she will tell me that 
they have been very lucky all through 
the last season, and it was near six 
thousand ling they got.” 

“But I suppose they are hopelessly in 
debt to some curer or other up about 
Habost ?” 

“Oh no, not at all. It is their own 
boat : it is not hired to them. And it is 
a very good boat whatever.” 

That unlucky “whatever” had slip- 
ped out inadvertently : the moment she 
had uttered it she blushed and looked 
timidly toward her companion, fearing 
that he had noticed it. He had not. 
How could she have made such a blun- 
der ? she asked herself. She had been 
most particular about the avoidance of 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


143 


this word, even in the Lewis. The girl 
did not know that from the moment she 
had left the steps of the Old Ship in 
company with that good friend of hers 
she had unconsciously fallen into much 
of her old pronunciation and her old 
habit of speech ; while Ingram, much 
more familiar with the Sheila of Borva- 
bost and Loch Roag than with the Sheila 
of Notting Hill and Kensington Gardens, 
did not perceive the difference, but was 
mightily pleased to hear her talk in any 
fashion whatsoever. 

By fair means or foul, Ingram man- 
aged to secure a pretty little sailing ves- 
sel which lay at anchor out near the 
New Pier, and when the pecuniary nego- 
tiations were over Sheila was invited to 
walk down over the loose stones of the 
beach and take command of the craft. 
The boatman was still very doubtful. 
When he had pulled them out to the 
boat, however, and put them on board, 
he speedily perceived that this hand- 
some young lady not only knew every- 
thing that had to be done in the way of 
getting the small vessel ready, but had 
a very smart and business-like way of 
doing it. It was very obvious that her 
companion did not know half as much 
about the matter as she did ; but he was 
obedient and watchful, and presently 
they were ready to start. The man put 
off in his boat to shore again much re- 
lieved in mind, but not a little puzzled 
to understand where the young lady had 
picked up not merely her knowledge of 
boats, but the ready way in which she 
put her delicate hands to hard work, 
and the prompt and effectual fashion in 
which she accomplished it. 

“Shall I belay away the jib or reef 
the upper hatchways ?” Ingram called 
out to Sheila when they had fairly got 
under way. 

She did not answer for a moment : she 
was still watching with a critical eye the 
manner in which the boat answered to 
her wishes ; and then, when everything 
promised well and she was quite satisfied, 
she said, “If you will take my place for 
a moment and keep a good lookout, I 
will put on my gloves.” 

She surrendered the tiller and the 


mainsail sheets into his care, and, with 
another glance ahead, pulled out her 
gloves. 

“You did not use to fear the salt water 
or the sun on your hands, Sheila,” said 
her companion. 

“I do not now,” she said, “but Frank 
would be displeased to see my hands 
brown. He has himself such pretty 
hands.” 

What Ingram thought about Frank 
Lavender’s delicate hands he was not 
going to say to his wife; and indeed 
he was called upon at this moment to 
let Sheila resume her post, which she \ 
did with an air of great satisfaction and 
content. 

And so they ran lightly through the 
curling and dashing water on this bril- 
liant day, caring little indeed for the 
great town that lay away to leeward, 
with its shining terraces surmounted by 
a faint cloud of smoke. Here all the 
roar of carriages and people was un- 
heard : the only sound that accompanied 
their talk was the splashing of the waves 
at the prow and the hissing and gurgling 
of the water along the boat. The south 
wind blew fresh and sweet around them, 
filling the broad white sails and fluttering 
the small pennon up there in the blue. 

It seemed strange to Sheila that she 
should be so much alone with so great 
a town close by — that under the boom 
she could catch a glimpse of the noisy 
Parade without hearing any of its noise. 
And there, away to windward, there was 
no more trace of city life — only the great 
blue sea, with its waves flowing on to- 
ward them from out of the far horizon, 
and with here and there a pale ship just 
appearing on the line where the sky and 
ocean met. 

“Well, Sheila, how do you like being 
on the sea again ?” said Ingram, getting 
out his pipe. 

"Oh, very well. But you must not 
smoke, Mr. Ingram : you must attend 
to the boat.” 

“ Don’t you feel at home in her yet ?” 
he asked. 

“ I am not afraid of her,” said Sheila, 
regarding the lines of the small craft 
with the eye of a shipbuilder, “but she 


10 


144 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


is very narrow in the beam, and she 
carries too much sail for so small a thing. 

I suppose they have not any squalls on 
this coast, where you have no hills and 
no narrows to go through.” 

“ It doesn’t remind you of Lewis, does 
it ?” he said, filling his pipe all the same. 

‘‘A little — out there it does,” she said, 
turning to the broad plain of the sea, 
“ but it is not much that is in this coun- 
try that is like the Lewis : sometimes I 
think I shall be a stranger when I go 
back to the Lewis, and the people will 
scarcely know me, and everything will 
be changed.” 

He looked at her for a second or two. 
Then he laid down his pipe, which had 
not been lit, and said to her gravely, “ I 
want you to tell me, Sheila, why you 
have got into a habit lately of talking 
about many things, and especially about 
your home in the North, in that sad 
way. You did not do that when you 
came to London first; and yet it was 
then that you might have been struck 
and shocked by the difference. You 
had no home-sickness for a long time — 
But is it home-sickness, Sheila ?” 

How was she to tell him? For an 
instant she was on the point of giving 
him all her confidence ; and then, some- 
how or other, it occurred to her that she 
would be wronging her husband in seek- 
ing such sympathy from a friend as she 
had been expecting, and expecting in 
vain, from him. 

‘‘Perhaps it is home-sickness,” she 
said in a low voice, while she pretended 
to be busy tightening up the mainsail 
sheet. “I should like to see Borva 
again.” 

“ But you don’t want to live there all 
your life?” he said. “You know that 
would be unreasonable, Sheila, even if 
your husband could manage it ; and I 
don’t suppose he can. Surely your papa 
does not expect you to go and live in 
Lewis always ?” 

“Oh, no,” she said eagerly. “You 
must not think my papa wishes anything 
like that. It will be much less than that 
he was thinking of when he used to 
speak to Mr. Lavender about it. And I 
do not wish to live in the Lewis always : 


I have no dislike to London — none at 
all— only that— that— ” And here she 
paused. 

“Come, Sheila,” he said in the old 
paternal way to which she had been ac- 
customed to yield up all her own wishes 
in the old days of their friendship, “I 
want you to be frank with me, and tell 
me what is the matter. I know there is 
something wrong : I have seen it for 
some time back. Now, you know I 
took the responsibility of your marriage . 
on my shoulders, and I am responsible 
to you, and to your papa and to myself, 
for your comfort and happiness. Do 
you understand ?” 

She still hesitated, grateful in her in- j 
most heart, but still doubtful as to what ; 
she should do. 

“ You look on me as an intermeddler,” :! 
he said with a smile. 

“No, no,” she said : “ you have always 
been our best friend.” 

“But I have intermeddled none the 
less. Don’t you remember when I told 
you I was prepared to accept the con- 
sequences ?” 

It seemed so long a time since then ! 

“And once having begun to inter- j 
meddle, I can’t stop, don’t you see ? ■ 
Now, Sheila, you’ll be a good little girl 
and do what I tell you. You’ll take the 
boat a long way out : we’ll put her head 
round, take down the sails, and let her 
tumble about and drift for a time, till 
you tell me all about your troubles, and ; 
then we’ll see what can be done.” 

She obeyed in silence, with her face 
grown grave enough in anticipation of ! 
the coming disclosures. She knew that 
the first plunge into them would be keen- 
ly painful to her, but there was a feeling 
at her heart that, this penance over, a 
great relief would be at hand. She trust- 
ed this man as she would have trusted 
her own father. She knew that there 
was nothing on earth he would not at- 
tempt if he fancied it would help her. } 
And she knew, too, that having experi- 
enced so much of his great unselfishness 
and kindness and thoughtfulness, she 
was ready to obey him implicitly in any- 
thing that he could assure her was right 
for her to do. 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


145 


How far away seemed the white cliffs 
now, and the faint green downs above 
them ! Brighton, lying farther to the 
west, had become dim and yellow, and 
over it a cloud of smoke lay thick and 
brown in the sunlight. A mere streak 
showed the line of the King’s road and 
all its carriages and people ; the beach 
beneath could just be made out by the 
white dots of the bathing-machines; 
the brown fishing-boats seemed to be 
close in shore ; the two piers were fore- 
shortened into small dusky masses mark- 
ing the beginning of the sea. And then 
from these distant and faintly-defined 
objects out here to the side of the small 
white-and-pink boat, that lay lightly in 
the lapping water, stretched that great 
and moving network of waves, with here 
and there a sharp gleam of white foam 
curling over amid the dark blue-green. 

Ingram took his seat by Sheila’s side, 
so that he should not have to look in 
her downcast face ; and then, with some 
little preliminary nervousness and hesi- 
tation, the girl told her story. She told 
it to sympathetic ears, and yet Ingram, 
having partly guessed how matters stood, 
and anxious, perhaps, to know whether 
much of her trouble might not be mere- 
ly the result of fancies which could be 
reasoned and explained away, was care- 
ful to avoid anything like corroboration. 
He let her talk in her own simple and 
artless way ; and the girl spoke to him, 
after a little while, with an earnestness 
which showed how deeply she felt her 
position. At the very outset she told 
him that her love for her husband had 
never altered for a moment — that all the 
prayer and desire of her heart was that 
they two might be to each other as she 
had at one time hoped they would be, 
when he got to know her better. She 
went over all the story of her coming to 
London, of her first experiences there, 
of the conviction that grew upon her 
that her husband was somehow disap- 
pointed with her, and only anxious now 
that she should conform to the ways and 
habits of the people with whom he asso- 
ciated. She spoke of her efforts to obey 
his wishes, and how heartsick she was 
with her failures, and of the dissatisfac- 


tion which he showed. She spoke of 
the people to whom he devoted his life, 
of the way in which he passed his time, 
and of the impossibility of her showing 
him, so long as he thus remained apart 
from her, the love she had in her heart 
for him, and the longing for sympathy 
which that love involved. And then 
she came to the question of Mrs. Lor- 
raine ; and here it seemed to Ingram 
she was trying at once to put her hus- 
band’s conduct in the most favorable 
light, and to blame herself for her un- 
reasonableness. Mrs. Lorraine was a 
pleasant companion to him, she could 
talk cleverly and brightly, she was pret- 
ty, and she knew a large number of his 
friends. Sheila was anxious to show 
that it was the most natural thing in the 
world that her husband, finding her so 
out of communion with his ordinary 
surroundings, should make an especial 
friend of this graceful and fascinating 
woman. And if at times it hurt her to 
be left alone — But here the girl broke 
down somewhat, and Ingram pretended 
not to know that she was crying. 

These were strange things to be told 
to a man, and they were difficult to an- 
swer. But out of these revelations — 
which rather took the form of a cry than 
of any distinct statement — he formed a 
notion of Sheila’s position sufficiently 
exact ; and the more he looked at it the 
more alarmed and pained he grew, for 
he knew more of her than her husband 
did. He knew the latent force of cha- 
racter that underlay all her submissive 
gentleness. He knew the keen sense 
of pride her Highland birth had given 
her ; and he feared what might happen 
if this sensitive and proud heart of hers 
were driven into rebellion by some — 
possibly unintentional — wrong. And 
this high-spirited, fearless, honor-loving 
girl — who was gentle and obedient, not 
through any timidity or limpness of cha- 
racter, but because she considered it her 
duty to be gentle and obedient — was to 
be cast aside and have her tenderest 
feelings outraged and wounded for the 
sake of an unscrupulous, shallow-brain- 
ed woman of fashion, who was not fit 
to be Sheila’s waiting-maid. Ingram 


146 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


had never seen Mrs. Lorraine, but he 
had formed his own opinion of her. 
The opinion, based upon nothing, was 
wholly wrong, but it served to increase, 
if that were possible, his sympathy with 
Sheila, and his resolve to interfere on 
her behalf at whatever cost. 

“Sheila,” he said, gravely putting his 
hand on her shoulder as if she were still 
the little girl who used to run wild with 
him about the Borva rocks, “you are a 
good woman.” 

He added to himself that Lavender 
knew little of the value, of the wife he 
had got, but he dared not say that to 
Sheila, who would suffer no imputation 
against her husband to be uttered in her 
presence, however true it might be, or 
however much she had cause to know it 
to be true. 

“And, after all,” he said in a lighter 
voice, “I think I can do something to 
mend all this. I will say for Frank Lav- 
ender that he is a thoroughly good fel- 
low at heart, and that when you appeal 
to him, and put things fairly before him, 
and show him what he ought to do, 
there is not a more honorable and 
straightforward man in the world. He 
has been forgetful, Sheila. He has been 
led away by these people, you know, 
and has not been aware of what you 
were suffering. When I put the matter 
before him, you will see it will be all 
right; and I hope to persuade him to 
give up this constant idling and take to 
his work, and have something to live 
for. I wish you and I together could 
get him to go away from London alto- 
gether — get him to take to serious land- 
scape painting on some wild coast — the 
Galway coast, for example.” 

“Why not the Lewis?” said Sheila, 
her heart turning to the North as natural- 
ly as the needle. 

“Or the Lewis. And I should like 
you and him to live away from hotels 
and luxuries, and all such things ; and 
he would work all day, and you would 
do the cooking in some small cottage 
you could rent, you know.” 

“You make me so happy in thinking 
of that,” she said, with her eyes growing 
wet again. 


“And why should he not do so? 
There is nothing romantic or idyllic 
about it, but a good, wholesome, plain 
sort of life, that is likely to make an 
honest painter of him, and bring both 
of you some well-earned money. And 
you might have a boat like this.” 

“We are drifting too far in,” said 
Sheila, suddenly rising. “Shall we go 
back now ?” 

“By all means,” he said; and so the 
small boat was put under canvas again, 
and was soon making way through the 
breezy water. 

“Well, all this seems simple enough, 
doesn’t it?” said Ingram. 

“ Yes,” said the girl, with her face full 
of hope. 

“And then, of course, when you are 
quite comfortable together, and making 
heaps of money, you can turn round and 
abuse me, and say I made all the mis- 
chief to begin with.” 

“ Did we do so before when you were 
very kind to us ?” she said in a low voice. 

“Oh, but that was different. To in- 
terfere on behalf of two young folks who 
are in love with each other is dangerous, 
but to interfere between two people who 
are married — that is a certain quarrel. 
I wonder what you will say when you 
are scolding me, Sheila, and bidding 
me get out of the house ? I have never 
heard you scold. Is it Gaelic or English 
you prefer ?” 

“ I prefer whichever can say the nicest 
things to my very good friends, and tell 
them how grateful I am for their kind- 
ness to me.” 

“Ah, well, we’ll see.” 

When they got back to shore it was 
half-past one. 

“You will come and have some lunch- 
eon with us ?” said Sheila when they had 
gone up the steps and into the King’s 
road. 

“Will that lady be there ?” 

“Mrs. Lorraine? Yes.” 

“Then I’ll come some other time.” 

“ But why not now ?” said Sheila. 
“It is not necessary that you will see 
us only to speak about those things we 
have been talking over ?” 

“Oh no, not at all. If you and Mr 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


147 


Lavender were by yourselves, I should 
come at once.” 

‘‘And are you afraid of Mrs. Lorraine?” 
said Sheila with a smile. “ She is a very 
nice lady, indeed : you have no cause to 
dislike her.” 

“ But I don’t want to meet her, Sheila, 
that is all,” he said ; and she knew well, 
by the precision of his manner, that there 
was no use trying to persuade him further. 

He walked along to the hotel with her, 
meeting a considerable stream of fash- 
ionably-dressed folks on the way; and 
neither he nor she seemed to remember 
that his costume — a blue pilot-jacket, 
not a little worn and soiled with the salt 
water, and a beaver hat that had seen a 
good deal of rough weather in the High- 
lands — was a good deal more comfort- 
able than elegant. He said to her, as 
he left her at the hotel, ‘‘Would you 
mind telling Lavender I shall drop in at 
half-past three, and that I expect to see 
him in the coffee-room ? I sha’n’t keep 
him five minutes.” 

She looked at him for a moment, and 
he saw that she knew what this appoint- 
ment meant, for her eyes were full of 
gladness and gratitude. He went away 
pleased at heart that she put so much 
trust in him. And in this case he should 
be able to reward that confidence, for 
Lavender was really a good sort of fel- 
low, and would at once be sorry for the 
wrong he had unintentionally done, and 
be only too anxious to set it right. He 
ought to leave Brighton at once, and 
London too. He ought to go away into 
the country or by the seaside, and begin 
working hard, to earn money and self- 
respect at the same time ; »and then, in 
this friendly solitude, he would get to 
know something about Sheila’s charac- 
ter, and begin to perceive how much 
more valuable were these genuine quali- 
ties of heart and mind than any social 
graces such as might lighten up a dull 
drawing-room. Had Lavender yet learnt 
to know the worth of an honest woman’s 
perfect love and unquestioning devotion ? 
Let these things be put before him, and 
he would go and do the right thing, as 
he had many a time done before, in 
obedience to the lecturing of his friend. 


Ingram called at half-past three, and 
went into the coffee-room. There was 
no one in the long, large room, and he 
sat down at one of the small tables by 
the windows, from which a bit of lawn, 
the King’s road and the sea beyond 
were visible. He had scarcely taken 
his seat when Lavender came in. 

“ Hallo, Ingram ! how are you ?” he 
said in his freest and friendliest way. 
‘‘ Won’t you come up stairs ? Have you 
had lunch ? Why did you go to the 
Ship ?” 

‘‘I always go to the Ship,” he said. 
‘‘No, thank you, I won’t go up stairs.” 

‘‘You are a most unsociable sort of 
brute?” said Lavender frankly. “Will 
you take a glass of sherry ?” 

“No, thank you.” 

“Will you have a game of billiards ?” 

“No, thank you. You don’t mean to 
say you would play billiards on such a 
day as this ?” 

“ It is a fine day, isn’t it ?” said Lav- 
ender, turning carelessly to look at the 
sunlit road and the blue sea. “ By the 
way, Sheila tells me you and she were 
out sailing this morning. It must have 
been very pleasant, especially for her, 
for she is mad about such things. What 
a curious girl she is, to be sure ! Don’t 
you think so ?” 

“I don’t know what you mean by 
curious,” said Ingram coldly. 

“Well, you know, strange — odd — un- 
like other people in her ways and her 
fancies. Did I tell you about my aunt 
taking her to see some friends of hers at 
Norwood ? No ? Well, Sheila had got 
out of the house somehow (I suppose 
their talking did not interest her), and 
when they went in search of her they 
found her in the cemetery crying like a 
child.” 

“What about ?” 

“Why,” said Lavender with a smile, 
“merely because so many people had 
died. She had never seen anything like 
that before : you know the small church- 
yards up in Lewis, with their inscriptions 
in Norwegian and Danish and German. 
I suppose the first sight of all the white 
stones at Norwood was too much for 
her.” 


1 48 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


“Well, I don’t see much of a joke in 
that,” said Ingram. 

“Who said there was any joke in it ?” 
cried Lavender impatiently. “ I never 
knew such a cantankerous fellow as you 
are. You are always fancying I am 
finding fault with Sheila ; and I never 
do anything of the kind. She is a very 
good girl indeed. I have every reason 
to be satisfied with the way our marriage 
has turned out.” 

“ Has she?" 

The words were not important, but 
there was something in the tone in which 
they were spoken that suddenly check- 
ed Frank Lavender’s careless flow of 
speech. He looked at Ingram for a mo- 
ment with some surprise, and then he 
said, “What do you mean ?” 

“Well, I will tell you what I mean,” 
said Ingram slowly. “ It is an awkward 
thing for a man to interfere between 
husband and wife, I am aware — he gets 
something else than thanks for his pains 
ordinarily — but sometimes it has to be 
done, thanks or kicks. Now, you know, 
Lavender, I had a good deal to do with 
helping forward your marriage in the 
North ; and I don’t remind you of that 
to claim anything in the way of consid- 
eration, but to explain why I think I am 
called on to speak to you now.” 

Lavender was at once a little frighten- 
ed and a little irritated. He half guess- 
ed what might be coming from the slow 
and precise manner in which Ingram 
talked. That form of speech had vexed 
him many a time before, for he would 
rather have had any amount of wild 
contention and bandying about of re- 
proaches than the calm, unimpassioned 
and sententious setting forth of his short- 
comings to which this sallow little man 
was perhaps too much addicted. 

“ I suppose Sheila has been complain- 
ing to you, then ?” said Lavender hotly. 

“You may suppose what absurdities 
you like,” said Ingram quietly; “but it 
would be a good deal better if you would 
listen to me patiently, and deal in a 
common-sense fashion with what I have 
got to say. It is nothing very desperate. 
Nothing has happened that is not of 
easy remedy, while the remedy would 


leave you and her in a much better 
position, both as regards your own esti- 
mation of yourselves and the opinion of 
your friends.” 

“ You are a little roundabout, Ingram,” 
said Lavender, “and ornate. But I sup- 
pose all lectures begin so. Go on.” 

Ingram laughed : “ If I am too formal, 
it is because I don’t want to make mis- 
chief by any exaggeration. Look here ! 
A long time before you were married I 
warned you that Sheila had very keen 
and sensitive notions about the duties 
that people ought to perform, about the 
dignity of labor, about the proper oc- 
cupations of a man, and so forth. These 
notions you may regard as romantic 
and absurd, if you like, but you might 
as well try to change the color of her 
eyes as attempt to alter any of her be- 
liefs in that direction.” 

“And she thinks that I am idle and 
indolent because I don’t care what a 
washerwoman pays for her candles?” 
said Lavender with impetuous contempt. 
“ Well, be it so. She is welcome to her 
opinion. But if she is grieved at heart 
because I can’t make Hobnailed boots, 
it seems to me that she might as well 
come and complain to myself, instead 
of going and detailing her wrongs to a 
third person, and calling for his sympathy 
in the character of an injured wife.” 

For an instant the dark eyes of the 
man opposite him blazed with a quick 
fire, for a sneer at Sheila was worse than 
an insult to himself ; but he kept quite 
calm, and said, “ That, unfortunately, is 
not what is troubling her.” 

Lavender rose abruptly, took a turn 
up and down the empty room, and said, 
“ If there is anything the matter, I prefer 
to hear it from herself. It is not respect- 
ful to me that she should call in a third 
person to humor her whims and fancies.” 

“Whims and fancies!” said Ingram, 
with that dark light returning to his eyes. 
“Do you know what you are talking 
about? Do you know that, while you 
are living on the charity of a woman 
you despise, and dawdling about the 
skirts of a woman who laughs at you, 
you are breaking the heart of a girl who 
has not her equal in England ? Whims 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


149 


and fancies ! Good God, I wonder how 
she ever could have — ” 

He stopped, but the mischief was 
done. These were not prudent words 
to come from a man who wished to step 
in as a mediator between husband and 
wife ; but Ingram’s blaze of wrath, kin- 
dled by what he considered the insuffer- 
able insolence of Lavender in thus speak- 
ing of Sheila, had swept all notions of 
prudence before it. Lavender, indeed, 
was much cooler than he was, and said, 
with an affectation of carelessness, "I 
am sorry you should vex yourself so 
much about Sheila. One would think 
you had had the ambition yourself, at 
some time or other, to play the part of 
husband to her ; and doubtless then you 
would have made sure that all her idle 
fancies were gratified. As it is, I was 
about to relieve you from the trouble of 
further explanation by saying that I 


am quite competent to manage my own 
affairs, and that if Sheila has any com- 
plaint to make she must make it to me.” 

Ingram rose, and was silent for a mo- 
ment. 

“Lavender,” he said, “it does not 
matter much whether you and I quarrel 
— I was prepared for that, in any case — 
but I ask you to give Sheila a chance 
of telling you what I had intended to 
tell you.” 

“ Indeed, I shall do nothing of the 
sort. I never invite confidences. When 
she wishes to tell me anything she knows 
I am ready to listen. But I am quite 
satisfied with the position of affairs as 
they are at present.” 

*' God help you, then !” said his friend, 
and went away, scarcely daring to con- 
fess to himself how dark the future 
looked. 



1 fr 


PART VIII 


CHAPTER XVI. 

EXCHANGES. 

J UST as Frank Lavender went down 
stairs to meet Ingram, a letter which 
had been forwarded from London was 
brought to Sheila. It bore the Lewis 
postmark, and she guessed it was from 
Duncan, for she had told Mairi to ask 
the^all keeper to write, and she knew 
he would hasten to obey her request 
at any sacrifice of comfort to himself. 
Sheila sat down to read the letter in a 
happy frame of mind. She had every 
confidence that all her troubles were 
about to be removed now that her good 
friend Ingram had come to her husband ; 
and here was a message to her from her 
home that seemed, even before she read 
it, to beg of her to come thither light- 
hearted and joyous. This was what she 
read : 

" Borvabost, the Island of Lews, 

“ the third Aug., 18 — . 

Honored Mrs. Lavender, — It waz 
Mairi waz sayin that you will want me 
to write to you, bit I am not good at the 
writen whatever, and it was 2 years since 
I was writen to Amerika, to John Ferka- 
son that kept the tea-shop in Stornoway, 
and was trooned in coming home the 
verra last year before this. It waz Mairi 
will say you will like a letter as well as 
any one that waz goin to Amerika, for 
the news and the things, and you will be 
as far away from us as if you waz living 
in Amerika or Glaska. But there is not 
much news, for the lads they hev all 
pulled up the boats, and they are away 
to Wick, and Sandy McDougal that waz 
living by Loch Langavat, he will be 
going too, for he was up at the sheilings 
when Mrs. Paterson’s lasses waz there 
with the cows, and it waz Jeanie the 
youngest and him made it up, and he 
haz twenty-five pounds in the bank, 
which is a good thing too mirover for 
the young couple. It was many a one 
waz sayin when the cows and the sheep 


waz come home from the sheilings that 
never afore waz Miss Sheila away from 
Loch Roag when the cattle would be 
swimmin across the loch to the island ; 
and I will say to many of them verra 
well you will wait and you will see Miss 
Sheila back again in the Lews, and it 
wazna allwas you would lif away from 
your own home where you was born and 
the people will know you from the one 
year to the next. John McNicol of 
Habost he will be verra bad three 
months or two months ago, and we waz 
thinkin he will die, and him with a wife 
and five bairns too, and four cows and 
a cart, but the doctor took a great dale 
of blood from him, and he is now verra 
well whatever, though wakely on the 
legs. It would hev been a bad thing if 
Mr. McNicol waz dead, for he will be 
verra good at pentin a door, and he haz 
between fifteen pounds and ten pounds 
in the bank at Stornoway, and four cows 
too and a cart, and he is a ferra religious 
man, and has great skill o’ the psalm- 
tunes, and he toesna get trunk now 
more as twice or as three times in the 
two weeks. It was his dochter Betsy, a 
verra fine lass, that waz come to Borva- 
bost, and it waz the talk among many 
that Alister-nan-Each he waz thinkin of 
makin up to her) but there will be a 
great laugh all over the island, and she 
will be verra angry and say she will not 
have him no if his house had a door of 
silfer to it for she will have no one that 
toesna go to the Caithness fishins wi the 
other lads. It waz blew verra hard here 
the last night or two or three. There is 
a great deal of salmon in the rivers ; and 
Mr. Mackenzie he will be going across 
to Grimersta, the day after to-morrow, 
or the next day before that, and the 
English gentlemen have been there more 
as two or three weeks, and they will be 
getting verra good sport whatever. 
Mairi she will be writen a letter to you 
to-morrow, Miss Sheila, and she will be 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


telling you all the news of the house. 
Mairi waz sayin she will be goin to Lon- 
don when the harvest was got in, and 
Scarlett will say to her that no one will 
let her land on the island again if she 
toesna bring you back with her to the 
island and to your own house. If it waz 
not too much trouble, Miss Sheila, it 
would be a proud day for Scarlett if you 
waz send me a line or two lines to say 
if you will be coming to the Lews this 
summer or before the winter is over 
whatever. I remain, Honored Mrs. 
Lavender, your obedient servant, 

“ Duncan Macdonald.” 

"This summer or winter,” said Sheila 
to herself, with a happy light on her 
face: “why not now?” Why should 
she not go down stairs to the coffee- 
room of the hotel and place this invita- 
tion in the hand of her husband and his 
friend ? Would not its garrulous sim- 
plicity recall to both of them the island 
they used to find so pleasant ? Would 
not they suddenly resolve to leave be- 
hind them London and its ways and 
people, even this monotonous sea out 
there, and speed away northwardly till 
they came in sight of the great and roll- 
ing Minch, with its majestic breadth of 
sky and its pale blue islands lying far 
away at the horizon ? Then the happy 
landing at Stornoway — her father and 
Duncan and Mairi all on the quay — the 
rapid drive over to Loch Roag, and the 
first glimpse of the rocky bays and clear 
water and white sand about Borva and 
Borvabost! And Sheila would once 
more — having cast aside this cumbrous 
attire that she had to change so often, 
and having got out that neat and simple 
costume that was so good for walking 
or driving or sailing — be proud to wait 
upon her guests, and help Mairi in her 
household ways, and have a pretty table 
ready for the gentlemen when they re- 
turned from the shooting. 

Her husband came up the hotel stairs 
and entered the room. She rose to meet 
him, with the open letter in her hand. 

“Sheila,” he said (and the light slow- 
ly died away from her face), “I have 
something to ask of you.” 


I5i 

She knew by the sound of his voice 
that she had nothing to hope : it was 
not the first time she had been disap- 
pointed, and yet this time it seemed 
especially bitter somehow. The awak- 
ening from these illusions was sudden. 

She did not answer, so he said in the 
same measured voice, “I have to ask 
that you will have henceforth no com- 
munication with Mr. Ingram : I do not 
wish him to come to the house. 1 ” 

She stood for a moment, apparently 
not understanding the meaning of what 
he said. Then, when the full force 'of 
this decision and request came upon her, 
a quick color sprang to her face, the 
cause of which, if it had been revealed 
to him in words, would have consider- 
ably astonished her husband. But that 
moment of doubt, of surprise and of 
inward indignation was soon over. She 
cast down her eyes and said meekly, 
“Very well, dear.” 

It was now his turn to be astonished, 
and mortified as well. He could not 
have believed it possible that she should 
so calmly acquiesce in the dismissal of 
one of her dearest friends. He had ex- 
pected a more or less angry protest, if 
not a distinct refusal, which would have 
given him an opportunity for displaying 
the injuries he conceived himself to have 
suffered at their hands. Why had she 
not come to himself? This man In- 
gram was presuming on his ancient 
friendship, and on the part he had taken 
in forwarding the marriage up in Borva. 
He had always, moreover, been some- 
what too much of the schoolmaster, with 
his severe judgments, his sententious 
fashion of criticising and warning peo- 
ple, and his readiness to prove the whole 
world wrong in order to show himself 
to be right. All these and many other 
things Lavender meant to say to Sheila 
so soon as she had protested against his 
forbidding Ingram to come any more to 
the house. But there was no protest. 
Sheila did not even seem surprised. 
She went back to her seat by the win- 
dow, folded up Duncan’s letter and put 
it in her pocket ; and then she turned to 
look at the sea. 

Lavender regarded her for a moment, 


152 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


apparently doubting whether he should 
himself prosecute the subject: then he 
turned and left the room. 

Sheila did not cry or otherwise seek to 
compassionate and console herself. Her 
husband had told her to do a certain 
thing; and she would do it. Perhaps 
she had been imprudent in having con- 
fided in Mr. Ingram, and if so, it was 
right that she should be punished. But 
the regret and pain that lay deep in her 
heart were that Ingram should have suf- 
fered through her, and that she had no 
opportunity of telling him that, though 
they might not see each other, she would 
never forget her friendship for him, or 
cease to be grateful to him for his un- 
ceasing and generous kindness to her. 

Next morning Lavender was sum- 
moned to London by a telegram which 
announced that his aunt was seriously 
ill. He and Sheila got ready at once, 
left by a forenoon train, had some brief 
luncheon at home, and then went down 
to see the old lady in Kensington Gore. 
During their journey Lavender had been 
rather more courteous and kindly toward 
Sheila than was his wont. Was he pleased 
that she had so readily obeyed him in 
this matter of giving up about the only 
friend she had in London ? or was he 
moved by some visitation of compunc- 
tion ? Sheila tried to show that she was 
grateful for his kindness, but there was 
that between them which could not be 
removed by chance phrases or atten- 
tions. 

Mrs. Lavender was in her own room. 
Paterson brought word that she wanted 
to see Sheila first and alone ; so Laven- 
der sat down in the gloomy drawing- 
room by the window, and watched the 
people riding and driving past, and the 
sunshine on the dusty green trees in the 
Park. 

“Is Frank Lavender below ?” said the 
thin old woman, who was propped up in 
bed, with some scarlet garment around 
her that made her resemble more than 
ever the cockatoo of which Sheila had 
thought on first seeing her. 

“Yes,” said Sheila. 

“I want to see you alone : I can’t bear 
him dawdling about a room, and staring 


at things, and saying nothing. Does he 
speak to you .?” 

Sheila did not wish to enter into any 
controversy about the habits of her hus- 
band, so she said, “ I hope you will see 
him before he goes, Mrs. Lavender. He 
is very anxious to know how you are, and 
I am glad to find you looking so well. 
You do not look like an invalid at all.” 

“Oh, I’m not going to die yet,” said 
the little dried old woman with the harsh 
voice, the staring eyes and the tightly- 
twisted gray hair. “I hope you didn’t 
come to read the Bible to me : you 
wouldn’t find one about in any case, I 
should think. If you like to sit down 
and read the sayings of the emperor 
Marcus Antoninus, I should enjoy that ; 
but I suppose you are too busy thinking 
what dress you’ll wear at my funeral.” 

“Indeed, I was thinking of no such 
thing,” said Sheila indignantly, but feel- 
ing all the same that the hard, glittering, 
expressionless eyes were watching her. 

“Do you think I believe you?” said 
Mrs. Lavender. “Bah! I hope I am 
able to recognize the facts of life. If 
you were to die this afternoon, I should 
get a black silk trimmed with crape the 
moment I got on my feet again, and go 
to your funeral in the ordinary way. I 
hope you will pay me the same respect. 
Do you think I am afraid to speak of 
these things ?” 

“Why should you speak of them?” 
said Sheila despairingly. 

“ Because it does you good to contem- 
plate the worst that can befall you, and 
if it does not happen you may rejoice. 
And it will happen. I know I shall be 
lying in this bed, with half a dozen of 
you round about trying to cry, and won- 
dering which will have the courage to 
turn and go out of the room first. Then 
there will be the funeral day, and Pater- 
son will be careful about the blinds, and 
go about the house on her tiptoes, as if 
I were likely to hear! Then there will 
be a pretty service up in the cemetery, 
and a man who never saw me will speak 
of his dear sister departed ; and then 
you’ll all go home and have your din- 
ner. Am I afraid of it ?” 

“ Why should you talk like that ?” said 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


153 


Sheila piteously. “You are not going to 
die. You distress yourself and others 
by thinking of these horrible things.” 

“ My dear child, there is nothing hor- 
rible in nature. Everything is part of 
the universal system which you should 
recognize and accept. If you had but 
trained yourself now, by the study of 
philosophical works, to know how help- 
less you are to alter the facts of life, and 
how it is the best wisdom to be prepared 
for the worst, you would find nothing 
horrible in thinking of your own funeral. 
You are not looking well.” 

Sheila was startled by the suddenness 
of the announcement : “ Perhaps I am 
a little tired with the traveling we have 
done to-day.” 

“ Is Frank Lavender kind to you ?” 

What was she to say with those two 
eyes scanning her face ? “ It is too soon 
to expect him to be anything else,” she 
said with an effort at a smile. 

“Ah ! So you are beginning to talk 
in that way ? I thought you were full 
of sentimental notions of life when you 
came to London. It is not a good place 
for nurturing such things.” 

“It is not,” said Sheila, surprised into 
a sigh. 

“ Come nearer. Don’t be afraid I shall 
bite you. I am not so ferocious as I 
look.” 

Sheila rose and went closer to the bed- 
side, and the old woman stretched out a 
lean and withered hand to her : “ If I 

thought that that silly fellow wasn’t be- 
having well to you — ” 

“I will not listen to you,” said Sheila, 
suddenly withdrawing her hand, while a 
quick color leapt to her face — “ I will not 
listen to you if you speak of my husband 
in that way.” 

“ I will speak of him any way I like. 
Don’t get into a rage. I have known 
Frank Lavender a good deal longer than 
you have. What I was going to say is 
this — that if I thought that he was not 
behaving well to you, I would play him 
a trick. I would leave my money, which 
is all he has got to live on, to you ; and 
when I died he would find himself de- 
pendent on you for every farthing he 
wanted to spend.” 


And the old woman laughed, with very 
little of the weakness of an invalid in the 
look of her face. But Sheila, when she 
had mastered her surprise and resolved 
not be angry, said calmly, “Whatever 1 
have, whatever I might have, that be- 
longs to my husband, not to me.” 

“Now you speak like a sensible girl,” 
said Mrs. Lavender. “That is the mis- 
fortune of a wife, that she cannot keep 
her own money to herself. But there are 
means by which the law may be de- 
feated, my dear. I have been thinking 
it over — I have been speaking of it to 
Mr. Ingram ; for I have suspected for 
some time that my nephew, Mr. Frank, 
was not behaving himself.” 

"Mrs. Lavender,” said Sheila, with a 
face too proud and indignant for tears, 
“you do not understand me. No one 
has the right to imagine anything against 
my husband and to seek to punish him 
through me. And when I said that 
everything I have belongs to him, I was 
not thinking of the law — no — but only 
this : that everything I have, or might 
have, would belong to him, as I myself 
belong to him of my own own free will 
and gift ; and I would have no money 
or anything else that was not entirely 
his.” 

“You are a fool.” 

“Perhaps,” said Sheila, struggling to 
repress her tears. 

“ What if I were to leave every farth- 
ing of my property to a hospital ? Where 
would Frank Lavender be then ?” 

“ He could earn his own living without 
any such help,” said Sheila proudly ; for 
she had never yet given up the hope 
that her husband would fulfill the fair 
promise of an earlier time, and win great 
renown for himself in striving to please 
her, as he had many a time vowed he 
would do. 

“ He has taken great care to conceal 
his powers in that way,” said the old 
woman with a sneer. 

“And if he has, whose fault is it ?” the 
girl said warmly. “ Who has kept him 
in idleness but yourself? And now you 
blame him for it. I wish he had never 
had any of your money — I wish he were 
never to have any more of it.” 


154 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


And then Sheila stopped, with a ter- 
rible dread falling over her. What had 
she not said ? The pride of her race had 
carried her so far, and she had given 
expression to all the tumult of her heart ; 
but had she not betrayed her duty as a 
wife, and grievously compromised the 
interests of her husband? And yet the 
indignation in her bosom was too strong 
to admit of her retracting those fatal 
phrases and begging forgiveness. She 
stood for a moment irresolute, and she 
knew that the invalid was regarding her 
curiously, as though she were some wild 
animal, and not an ordinary resident in 
Bayswater. 

“You are a little mad, but you are a 
good girl, and I want to be friends with 
you. You have in you the spirit of a 
dozen Frank Lavenders.” 

“ You will never make friends with me 
by speaking ill of my husband,” said 
Sheila with the same proud and indig- 
nant look. 

“ Not when he ill uses you ?” 

“ He does not ill use me. What has 
Mr. Ingram been saying to you ?” 

The sudden question would certainly 
have brought about a disclosure if any 
were to have been made ; but Mrs. Lav- 
ender assured Sheila that Mr. Ingram 
had told her nothing, that she had been 
forming her own conclusions, and that 
she still doubted that they were right. 

“ Now sit down and read to me. You 
will find Marcus Antoninus on the top 
of those books.” 

“Frank is in the drawing-room,” ob- 
served Sheila mildly. 

“He can wait,” said the old woman 
sharply. 

“Yes, but you cannot expect me to 
keep him waiting,” with a smile which 
did not conceal her very definite purpose. 

“Then ring, and bid him come up. 
You will soon get rid of those absurd 
sentiments.” 

Sheila rang the bell, and sent Mrs. 
Paterson down for Lavender, but she 
did not betake herself to Marcus Anto- 
ninus. She waited a few minutes, and 
then her husband made his appearance, 
whereupon she sat down and left to him 
the agreeable duty of talking with this 


toothless old heathen about funerals and 
lingering death. 

“ Well, Aunt Lavender, I am sorry to 
hear you have been ill, but I suppose 
you are getting all right again, to judge 
by your looks.” 

“I am not nearly as ill as you ex- 
pected.” 

“ I wonder you did not say ‘ hoped,’ ” 
remarked Lavender carelessly. “You are 
always attributing the most charitable 
feelings to your fellow-creatures.” 

“Frank Lavender,” said the old lady, 
who was a little pleased by this bit of 
flattery, “if you came here to make your- 
self impertinent and disagreeable, you 
can go down stairs again. Your wife 
and I get on very well without you.” 

“I am glad to hear it,” he said: “I 
suppose you have been telling her what 
is the matter with you.” 

“I have not. I don’t know. I have 
had a pain . in the head and two fits, and 
I dare say the next will carry me off. 
The doctors won’t tell me anything about 
it, so I suppose it is serious.” 

“Nonsense!” cried Lavender. “Se- 
rious ! To look at you, one would say 
you never had been ill in your life.” 

“Don’t tell stories, Frank Lavender. 
I know I look like a corpse, but I don’t 
mind it, for I avoid the looking-glass 
and keep the spectacle for my friends. 
I expect the next fit will kill me.” 

“ I’ll tell you what it is, Aunt Laven- 
der : if you would only get up and come 
with us for a drive in the Park, you 
would find there was nothing of an in- 
valid about you ; and we should take 
you home to a quiet dinner at Notting 
Hill, and Sheila would sing to you all 
the evening, and to-morrow you would 
receive the doctors in state in your 
drawing-rooms, and tell them you were 
going for a month to Malvern.” 

“Your husband has a fine imagination, 
my dear,” said Mrs. Lavender to Sheila. 
“ It is a pity he puts it to no use. Now 
I shall let both of you go. Three 
breathing in this room are too many for 
the cubic feet of air it contains. Frank, 
bring over those scales and put them on 
the table, and send Paterson to me as 
you go out.” 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


155 


And so they went down stairs and out 
of the house. Just as they stood on the 
steps, looking for a hansom, a young 
lad came forward and shook hands with 
Lavender, glancing rather nervously at 
Sheila. 

“Well, Mosenberg,” said Lavender, 
“ you’ve come back from Leipsic at last ? 
We got your card when we came home 
this morning from Brighton. Let me 
introduce you to my wife.” 

The boy looked at the beautiful face 
before him with something of distant 
wonder and reverence in his regard. 
Sheila had heard of the lad before — of 
the Mendelssohn that was to be — and 
liked his appearance at first sight. He 
was a rather handsome boy of fourteen 
or fifteen, of the fair Jew type, with large, 
dark, expressive eyes, and long, wavy, 
light-brown hair. He spoke English 
fluently and well : his slight German 
accent was, indeed, scarcely so distinct 
as Sheila’s Highland one, the chief pe- 
culiarity of his speaking being a prefer- 
ence for short sentences, as if he were 
afraid to adventure upon elaborate Eng- 
lish. He had not addressed a dozen 
sentences to Sheila before she had begun 
to have a liking for the lad, perhaps on 
account of his soft and musical voice, 
perhaps on account of the respectful and 
almost wondering admiration that dwelt 
in his eyes. He spoke to her as if she 
were some saint, who had but to smile 
to charm and bewilder the humble wor- 
shiper at her shrine. 

“I was intending to call upon Mrs. 
Lavender, madame,” he said. “ I heard 
that she was ill. Perhaps you can tell 
me if she is better.” 

“She seems to be very well to-day, 
and in very good spirits,” Sheila an- 
swered. 

“Then I will not go in. Did you 
propose to take a walk in the Park, 
madame ?” 

Lavender inwardly laughed at the 
magnificent audacity of the lad, and, 
seeing that Sheila hesitated, humored 
him by saying, “Well, we were thinking 
of calling on one or two people before 
going home to dinner. But I haven’t 
seen you for a long time, Mosenberg, 


and I want you to tell me how you suc- 
ceeded at the Conservatoire. If you 
like to walk with us for a bit, we can 
give you something to eat at seven.” 

“ That would be very pleasant for me,” 
said the boy, blushing somewhat, “if it 
does not incommode you, madame.” 

“Oh no : I hope you will come,” said 
Sheila most heartily ; and so they set 
out for a walk through Kensington Gar- 
dens northward. 

Precious little did Lavender learn 
about Leipsic during that walk. The 
boy devoted himself wholly to Sheila. 
He had heard frequently of her, and he 
knew of her coming from the wild and 
romantic Hebrides ; and he began to 
tell her of all the experiments that com- 
posers had made in representing the 
sound of seas and storms and winds 
howling through caverns washed by the 
waves. Lavender liked music well 
enough, and could himself play and 
sing a little, but this enthusiasm rather 
bored him. He wanted to know if the 
yellow wine was still as cool and clear 
as ever down in the twilight of Auer- 
bach’s cellar, what burlesques had lately 
been played at the theatre, and whether 
such and such a beer-garden was still to 
the fore ; whereas he heard only analyses 
of overtures, and descriptions of the uses 
of particular musical instruments, and a 
wild rhapsody about moonlit seas, the 
sweetness of French horns, the King of 
Thule, and a dozen other matters. 

“ Mosenberg,” he said, “ before you go 
calling on people you ought to visit an 
English tailor. People will think you 
belong to a German band.” 

“ I have been to a tailor,” said the lad 
with a frank laugh. “ My parents, ma- 
dame, wish me to be quite English : that 
is why I am sent to live in London, while 
they are in Frankfort. I stay with some 
very good friends of mine, who are very 
musical, and they are not annoyed by 
my practicing, as other people would 
be.” 

“ I hope you will sing something to us 
this evening,” said Sheila. 

“I will sing and play for you all the 
evening,” he said lightly, “until you are 
tired. But you must tell me when you 


1 5 6 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


are tired, for who can tell how much mu- 
sic will be enough ? Sometimes two or 
three songs are more than enough to 
make people wish you away.” 

“ You need have no fear of tiring me,” 
said Sheila. "But when you are tired I 
will sing for you.” 

‘‘Yes, of course you sing, madame,” 
he said, casting down his eyes : ** I knew 
that when I saw you.” 

Sheila had got a sweetheart, and Lav- 
ender saw it and smiled good-naturedly. 
The awe and reverence with which this 
lad regarded the beautiful woman beside 
him were something new and odd in 
Kensington Gardens. Yet it was the 
way of those boys. He had himself had 
his imaginative fits of worship, in which 
some very ordinary young woman, who 
ate a good breakfast and spent an hour 
and a half in arranging her hair before 
going out, was regarded as some beau- 
tiful goddess fresh risen from the sea or 
descended from the clouds. Young Mo- 
senberg was just at the proper age for 
these foolish dreams. He would sing 
songs to Sheila, and reveal to her in that 
way a passion of which he dared not 
otherwise speak. He would compose 
pieces of music for her, and dedicate 
them to her, and spend half his quar- 
terly allowance in having them printed. 
He would grow to consider him, Laven- 
der, a heartless brute, and cherish dark 
notions of poisoning him, but for the 
pain it might cause to her. 

“ I don’t remember whether you smoke, 
Mosenberg,” Lavender said after din- 
ner. 

‘‘Yes — a cigarette sometimes,” said 
the lad ; ‘‘but if Mrs. Lavender is going 
away perhaps she will let me go into the 
drawing-room with her. There is that 
sonata of Muzio Clementi, madame, 
which I will try to remember for you if 
you please.” 

‘‘All right,” said Lavender: “you’ll 
find me in the next room on the left 
when you get tired of your music and 
want a cigar. I think you used to beat 
me at chess, didn’t you ?” 

“ I do not know. We will try once 
more to-night.” 

Then Sheila and he went into the 


drawing-room by themselves, and while 
she took a seat near the brightly-lit fire- 
place, he opened the piano at once and 
sat down. He turned up his cuffs, he 
took a look at the pedals, he threw back 
his head, shaking his long brown hair ; 
and then, with a crash like thunder, his 
two hands struck the keys. He had for- 
gotten all about that sonata : it was a fan- 
tasia of his own, based on the airs in 
Der Freischiitz , that he played ; and as 
he played Sheila’s poor little piano suf- 
fered somewhat. Never before had it 
been so battered about, and she wished 
the small chamber were a great hall, to 
temper the voluminous noise of this 
opening passage. But presently the 
music softened. The white, lithe fingers 
ran lightly over the keys, so that the 
notes seemed to ripple out like the prat- 
tling of a stream, and then again some 
stately and majestic air or some joyous 
burst of song would break upon this 
light accompaniment, and lead up to 
another roar and rumble of noise. It 
was a very fine performance, doubtless, 
but what Sheila remarked most was the 
enthusiasm of the lad. • She was to see 
more of that. 

“Now,” he said, “that is nothing. It 
is to get one’s fingers accustomed to the 
keys you play anything that is loud and 
rapid. But if you please, madame, shall 
I sing you something?” 

“Yes, do,” said Sheila. 

“I will sing for you a little German 
song which I believe Jenny Lind used to 
sing, but I never heard her sing. You 
know German ?” 

“Very little indeed.” 

“ This is only the cry of some one who 
is far away about his sweetheart. It is 
very simple, both in the words and the 
music.” 

And he began to sing, in a voice so 
rich, so tender and expressive that Sheila 
sat amazed and bewildered to hear him. 
Where had this boy caught such a trick 
of passion, or was it really a trick that 
threw into his voice all the pathos of a 
strong man’s love and grief? He had a 
powerful baritone, of unusual compass 
and rare sweetness ; but it was not the 
finely-trained art of his singing, but the 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


157 


passionate abandonment of it, that thrill- 
ed Sheila, and indeed brought tears to 
her eyes. How had this mere lad learn- 
ed all the yearning and despair of love, 
that he sang, 

Dir bebt die Brust, 

Dir schlagt dies Herz, 

Du meine Lust ! 

O du, mein Schmerz ! 

Nur an den Winden, den Sternen der Hoh. 

Muss ich verkiinden mein susses Weh ! — 

as though his heart were breaking? 
When he had finished he paused for a 
moment or two before leaving the piano, 
and then he came over to where Sheila 
sat. She fancied there was a strange 
look on his face, as of one who had been 
really experiencing the wild emotions of 
which he sang ; but he said, in his ordi- 
nary careful way of speaking, “Ma- 
dame, I am sorry I cannot translate the 
words for you into English. They are 
too simple ; and they have, what is com- 
mon in many German songs, a mingling 
of the pleasure and the sadness of being 
in love that would not read natural per- 
haps in English. When he says to her 
that she is his greatest delight and also 
his greatest grief, it is quite right in the 
German, but not in the English.” 

“ But where have you learned all these 
things ?” she said to him, talking to him 
as if he were a mere child, and looking 
without fear into his handsome boyish 
face and fine eyes. "Sit down and tell 
me. That is the song of some one 
whose sweetheart is far away, you said. 
But you sang it as if you yourself had 
some sweetheart far away.” 

“ So I have, madame,” he said, seri- 
ously : “ when I sing the song, I think of 
her then, so that I almost cry for her.” 

“And who is she?” said Sheila gently. 
“ Is she very far away ?” 

“ I do not know,” said the lad absent- 
ly. “ I do not know who she is. Some- 
times I think she is a beautiful woman 
away at St. Petersburg, singing in the 
opera-house there. Or I think she has 
sailed away in a ship from me.” 

“ But you do not sing about any par- 
ticular person ?” said Sheila, with an in- 
nocent wonder appearing in her eyes. 

“ Oh no, not at all,” said the boy ; and 
then he added, with some suddenness, 


“ Do you think, madame, any fine songs 
like that, or any fine words that go to 
the heart of people, are written about any 
one person ? Oh no ! The man has a 
great desire in him to say something 
beautiful or sad, and he says it — not to 
one person, but to all the world ; and 
all the world takes it from him as a gift. 
Sometimes, yes, he will think of one 
woman, or he will dedicate the music to 
her, or he will compose it for her wed- 
ding, but the feeling in his heart is 
greater than any that he has for her. 
Can you believe, madame, that Mendels- 
sohn wrote the Hochzeitm — the Wed- 
ding March — for any one wedding ? No. 
It was all the marriage joy of all the 
world he put into his music, and every 
one knows that. And you hear it at this 
wedding, at that wedding, but you know 
it belongs to something far away and 
more beautiful than the marriage of any 
one bride with her sweetheart. And if 
you will pardon me, madame, for speak- 
ing about myself, it is about some one I 
never knew, who is far more beautiful 
and precious to me than any one I ever 
knew, that I try to think when I sing 
these sad songs, and then I think of her 
far away, and not likely ever to see me 
again.” 

“ But some day you will find that you 
have met her in real life,” Sheila said. 
“And you will find her far more beauti- 
ful and kind to you than anything you 
dreamed about ; and you will try to write 
your best music to give to her. And then , 
if you should be unhappy, you will find 
how much worse is the real unhappiness 
about one you love than the sentiment 
of a song you can lay aside at any mo- 
ment.” 

The lad looked at her. “ What can you 
know about unhappiness, madame ?” he 
said with a frank and gentle simplicity 
that she liked. 

“I ?” said Sheila. “When people get 
married and begin to experience the 
cares of the world, they must expect to 
be unhappy sometimes.” 

“But not you,” he said with some 
touch of protest in his voice, as if it 
were impossible the world should deal 
harshly with so young and beautiful and 


1 5 8 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


tender a creature. “You can have noth- 
ing but enjoyment around you. Every 
one must try to please you. You need 
only condescend to speak to people, and 
they are grateful to you for a great favor. 
Perhaps, madame, you think I am im- 
pertinent ?” 

He stopped and blushed, while Sheila, 
herself with a little touch of color, an- 
swered him that she hoped he would 
always speak to her quite frankly, and 
then suggested that he might sing once 
more for her. 

“Very well,” he said as he sat down 
to the piano : “ this is not any more a 
sad song. It is about a young lady who 
will not let her sweetheart kiss her, ex- 
cept on conditions. You shall hear the 
conditions, and what he says.” 

Sheila began to wonder whether this 
innocent-eyed lad had been imposing 
on her. The song was acted as well as 
sung. It consisted chiefly of a dialogue 
between the two lovers ; and the boy, 
with a wonderful ease and grace and 
skill, mimicked the shy coquetries of the 
girl, her fits of petulance and dictation, 
and the pathetic remonstrances of her 
companion, his humble entreaties and 
his final sullenness, which is only con- 
quered by her sudden and ample con- 
sent. “What a rare faculty of artistic 
representation this precocious boy must 
have,” she thought, “if he really ex- 
hibits all those moods and whims and 
tricks of manner without having himself 
been in the position of the despairing 
and imploring lover !” 

“You were not thinking of the beau- 
tiful lady in St. Petersburg when you 
were singing just now,” Sheila said on 
his coming back to her. 

"Oh no,” he said carelessly: “that is 
nothing. You have not to imagine any- 
thing. These people, you see them on 
every stage in the comedies and farces.” 

“But that might happen in actual 
life,” said Sheila, still not quite sure 
about him. “ Do you know that many 
people would think you must have your- 
self been teased in that way, or you 
could not imitate it so naturally ?” 

“I! Oh no, madame,” he said seri- 
ously: “I should not act that way if I 


were in love with a woman. If I found 
her a comedy-actress, liking to make her 
amusement out of our relations, I should 
say to her, ‘Good-evening, mademoi- 
selle : we have both made a little mis- 
take.’ ” 

“But you might be so much in love 
with her that you could not leave her 
without being very miserable.” 

“I might be very much in love with 
her, yes; but I would rather go away 
and be miserable than be humiliated by 
such a girl. Why do you smile, ma- 
dame ? Do you think I am vain, or that 
I am too young to know anything about 
that? Perhaps both are true, but one 
cannot help thinking.” 

“Well,” said Sheila, with a grandly 
maternal air of sympathy and interest, 
“you must always remember this — that 
you have something more important to 
attend to than merely looking out for a 
beautiful sweetheart. That is the fancy 
of a foolish girl. You have your profes- 
sion, and you must become great and 
famous in that ; and then some day, 
when you meet this beautiful woman 
and ask her to be your wife, she will be 
bound to do that, and you will confer 
honor on her as well as secure happiness 
to yourself. Now, if you were to fall in 
love with some coquettish girl like her 
you were singing about, you would have 
no more ambition to become famous, 
you would lose all interest in everything 
except her, and she would be able to 
make you miserable by a single word. 
When you have made a name for your- 
self, and got a good many more years, 
you will be better able to bear anything 
that happei>s to you in your love or in 
your marriage.” 

“You are very kind to take so much 
trouble,” said young Mosenberg, look- 
ing up with big, grateful eyes. “Per- 
haps, madame, if you are not very busy 
during the day, you will let me call in 
sometimes, and if there is no one here I 
will tell you about what I am doing, 
and play for you or sing for you, if you 
please.” • 

“In the afternoons I am always free,” 
she said. 

“ Do you never go out ?” he asked. 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


l S9 


“Not often. My husband is at his 
studio most of the day.” 

The boy looked at her, hesitated for a 
moment, and then, with a sudden rush 
of color to his face, “You should not 
stay so much in the house. Will you 
sometimes go for a little walk with me, 
madame, to Kensington Gardens, if you 
are not busy in the afternoon ?” 

“Oh, certainly,” said Sheila, without a 
moment’s embarrassment. “ Do you live 
near them ?” 

“ No : I live in Sloane street, but the 
underground railway brings me here in 
a very short time.” 

That mention of Sloane street gave a 
twinge to Sheila’s heart. Ought she to 
have been so ready to accept offers of 
new friendship just as her old friend had 
been banished from her ? 

“ In Sloane street ? Do you know Mr. 
Ingram ?” 

“ Oh yes, very well. Do you ?” 

“ He is one of my oldest friends,” said 
Sheila bravely : she would not acknow- 
ledge that their intimacy was a thing of 
the past. 

“ He is a very good friend to me — I 
know that,” said young Mosenberg, with 
a laugh. “He hired a piano merely 
because I used to go into his rooms at 
night ; and now he makes me play over 
all my most difficult music when I go in, 
and he sits and smokes a pipe and pre- 
tends to like it. I do not think he does, 
but I have got to do it all the same ; 
and then afterward I sing for him some 
songs that I know he likes. Madame, I 
think I can surprise you.” 

He went suddenly to the piano and 
began to sing, in a very quiet way ; 

Oh soft be thy slumbers by Tigh-na-linne's waters : 
Thy late-wake was sung by MacDiarmid's fair daugh- 
ters ; 

But far in Lochaber the true heart was weeping 
Whose hopes are entombed in the grave where thou 'rt 
sleeping. 

It was the lament of the young girl 
whose lover had been separated from 
"her by false, reports, and who died before 
he could get back to Lochaber when 
the deception was discovered. And the 
wild, sad air that the girl is supposed to 
sing seemed so strange with those new 
11 


chords that this boy-musician gave it 
that Sheila sat and listened to it as 
though it were the sound of the seas 
about Borva coming to her with a new 
voice and finding her altered and a 
stranger. 

“I know nearly all of those Highland 
songs that Mr. Ingram has got,” said the 
lad. 

“I did not know he had any,” Sheila 
said. 

" Sometimes he tries to sing one him- 
self,” said the boy with a smile, “but he 
does not sing very well, and he gets vex- 
ed with himself in fun, and flings things 
about the room. But you will sing some 
of those songs, madame, and let me 
hear how they are sung in the North ?” 

“Some time,” said Sheila. “I would 
rather listen just now to all you can tell 
me about Mr. Ingram — he is such a very 
old friend of mine, and I do not know 
how he lives.” 

The lad speedily discovered that there 
was at least one way of keeping his new 
and beautiful friend profoundly inter- 
ested; and indeed he went on talking 
until Lavender came into the room in 
evening dress. It was eleven o’clock, 
and young Mosenberg started up with a 
thousand apologies and hopes that he 
had not detained Mrs. Lavender. No, 
Mrs. Lavender was not going out : her 
husband was going round for an hour to 
a ball that Mrs. Kavanagh was giving, 
but she preferred to stay at home. 

“ May I call upon you to-morrow after- 
noon, madame ?” said the boy as he was 
leaving. 

“ I shall be very glad if you will,” 
Sheila answered. 

And as he went along the pavement 
young Mosenberg observed to his com- 
panion that Mrs. Lavender did not seem 
to have gone out much, and that it was 
very good of her to have promised to go 
with him occasionally into Kensington 
Gardens. 

“Oh, has she ?” said Lavender. 

“Yes,” said the lad with some sur- 
prise. 

“You are lucky to be able to get her 
to leave the house,” her husband said : 
“ I can’t.” 


i6o 


A PRINCESS OF TIIULE. 


Perhaps he had not tried so much as 
the words seemed to imply. 


CHAPTER XVII. 
guesses; 

‘‘Mr. Ingram,” cried young Mosen- 
berg, bursting into the room of his friend, 
do you know that I have seen your 
princess from the island of the Atlantic ? 
Yes, I met her yesterday, and I went up 
to the house, and I dined there and spent 
all the evening there.” 

Ingram was not surprised, nor, appa- 
rently, much interested. He was cutting 
open the leaves of a quarterly review, 
and a freshly- filled pipe lay on the table 
beside him. A fire had been lit, for the 
evenings were getting chill occasionally ; 
the shutters were shut ; there was some 
whisky on the table ; so that this small 
apartment seemed to have its share of 
bachelors’ comforts. 

“ Well,” said Ingram quietly, “ did you 
plav for her ?” 

‘‘Yes.” 

‘‘And sing for her too ? ’ 

“ Yes.” 

“ Did you play and sing your very best 
for her ?” 

‘‘Yes, I did. But I have not told you 
half yet. This afternoon I went up, and 
she went out for a walk with me ; and 
we went down through Kensington Gar- 
dens, and all round by the Serpentine — ” 

“ Did she go into that parade of peo- 
ple ?” said Ingram, looking up with some 
surprise. 

‘‘No,” said the lad, looking rather 
crestfallen, for he would have liked to 
show off Sheila to some of his friends, 
"she would not go: she preferred to 
watch the small boats on the Serpentine ; 
and she was very kind, too, in speaking 
to the children, and helping them with 
their boats, although some people stared 
at her. And what is more than all these 
things, to-morrow night she comes with 
me to a concert in the St. James’s Hall — 
yes.” 

“ You are very fortunate,” said Ingram 
with a smile, for he was well pleased to 
hear that Sheila had taken a fancy to 


the boy, and was likely to find his society 
amusing. “But you have not told me 
yet what you think of her.” 

“What I think of her?” said the lad, 
pausing in a bewildered way, as if he 
could find no words to express his opin- 
ion of Sheila. And then he said, sud- 
denly, “ I think she is like the Mother of 
God.” 

“You irreverent young rascal!” said 
Ingram, lighting his pipe, “how dare 
you say such a thing ?” 

“I mean in the pictures — in the tall 
pictures you see in some churches abroad, 
far up in a half-darkness. She has the 
same sweet, compassionate look, and her 
eyes are sometimes a little sad ; and 
when she speaks to you, you think you 
have known her for a long time, and 
that she wishes to be very kind to you. 
But she is not a princess at all, as you 
told me. I expected to find her grand, 
haughty, willful — yes ; but she is much 
too friendly for that; and when she 
laughs you see she could not sweep 
about a room and stare at people. But 
if she was angry or proud, perhaps 
then — ” 

“ See you don’t make her angry, then,” 
said Ingram. “Now go and play over 
all you were practicing in the morning. 
No ! stop a bit. Sit down and tell me 
something more about your experiences 
of Shei — of Mrs. Lavender.” 

Young Mosenberg laughed and sat 
down : “Do you know, Mr. Ingram, that 
the same thing occurred the night before 
last ? I was about to sing some more, 
or I was asking Mrs. Lavender to sing 
some more — I forget which — but she said 
to me, * Not just now. I wish you to sit 
down and tell me all you know about 
Mr. Ingram.’ ” 

“And she no sooner honors you with 
her confidence than you carry it to every 
one ?” said Ingram, somewhat fearful of 
the boy’s tongue. 

“ Oh, as to that,” said the lad, delighted 
to see that his friend was a little embar- 
rassed — “As to that, I believe she is in 
love with you.” 

“ Mosenberg,” said Ingram with a 
flash of anger in the dark eyes, “if you 
were half a dozen years older I would 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


thrash the life out of you. Do you think 
that is a pretty sort of joke to make 
about a woman ? Don’t you know the 
mischief your gabbling tongue might 
make ? for how is every one to know 
that you are talking merely impertinent 
nonsense ?” 

“Oh,” said the boy audaciously, “I 
did not mean anything of the kind you 
see in comedies or in operas, breaking up 
marriages and causing duels ? Oh no. 
I think she is in love with you as I am 
in love with her; and I am, ever since 
yesterday.” 

“ Well, I will say this for you,” re- 
marked Ingram slowly, "that you are 
the cheekiest young beggar I have the 
pleasure to know. You are in love with 
her, are you ? A lady admits you to 
her house, is particularly kind to you, 
talks to you in confidence, and then you 
go and tell people that you are in love 
with her !” 

“ I did not tell people,” said Mosen- 
berg, flushing under the severity of the 
reproof : “ 1 told you only, and I thought 
you would understand what I meant. I 
should have told Lavender himself just 
as soon — yes ; only he would not care.” 

“ How do you know ?” 

“Bah!” said the boy impatiently. 
“ Cannot one see it ? You have a pretty 
wife — much prettier than any one you 
would see at a ball at Mrs. Kavanagh’s 
— and you leave her at home, and you 
go to the ball to amuse yourself.” 

This boy, Ingram perceived, was get- 
ting to see too clearly how matters stood. 
He bade him go and play some music, 
having first admonished him gravely 
about the necessity of keeping some 
watch and ward over his tongue. Then 
the pipe was re-lit, and a fury of sound 
arose at the other end of the room. 

So Lavender, forgetful of the true- 
hearted girl who loved him, forgetful of 
his own generous instincts, forgetful of 
the future that his fine abilities promised, 
was still dangling after this alien woman, 
and Sheila was left at home, with her 
troubles and piteous yearnings and fan- 
cies as her only companions ? Once upon 
a time Ingram could have gone straight 
up to him and admonished him, and 


161 

driven him to amend his ways. But now 
that was impossible. 

What was still possible ? One wild 
project occurred to him for a moment, 
but he laughed at it and dismissed it. 
It was that he should go boldly to Mrs. 
Lorraine herself, ask her plainly if she 
knew what cruel injury she was doing 
to this young wife, and force her to turn 
Lavender adrift. But what enterprise of 
the days of old romance could be com- 
pared with this mad proposal ? To ride 
up to a castle, blow a trumpet, and an- 
nounce that unless a certain lady were 
released forthwith death and destruc- 
tion would begin, — all that was simple 
enough, easy and according to rule; but 
to go into a lady’s drawing-room with- 
out an introduction, and request her to 
stop a certain flirtation,- — that was a 
much more awful undertaking. But In- 
gram could not altogether dismiss this 
notion from his head. Mosenberg went 
on playing — no longer his practicing- 
pieces, but all manner of airs which he 
knew Ingram liked — while the small sal- 
low man with the brown beard lay in 
his easy-chair and smoked his pipe, 
and gazed attentively at his toes on the 
fender. 

“You know Mrs. Kavanagh and her 
daughter, don’t you, Mosenberg?” he 
said during an interval in the music. 

“Not much,” said the boy. “They 
were in England only a little while be- 
fore I went to Leipsic.” 

“ I should like to know them.” 

“That is very easy. Mr. Lavender 
will introduce you to them : Mrs. Lav- 
ender said he went there very much.” 

“What would they do, do you think, 
if I went up and asked to see them ?” 

“The servant would ask if it was 
about beer or coals that you called.” 

A man will do much, for a woman who 
is his friend, but to be suspected of be- 
ing a brewer’s traveler, to have to push 
one’s way into a strange drawing-room, 
to have to confront the awful stare of the 
inmates, and then to have to deliver a 
message which they will probably con- 
sider as the very extreme of audacious 
and meddling impertinence ! The pros- 
pect was not pleasant, and yet Ingram, 


162 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


as he sat and thought over it that even- 
ing, finally resolved to encounter all these 
dangers and wounds. He could help 
Sheila in no other way. He was ban- 
ished from her house. Perhaps he might 
induce this American girl to release her 
captive and give Lavender back to his 
own wife. What were a few twinges of 
one’s self-respect, or risks of* a humili- 
ating failure, compared with the possi- 
bility of befriending Sheila in some small 
way ? 

Next morning he went early in to 
Whitehall, and about one o’clock in the 
forenoon started off for Holland Park. 
He wore a tall hat, a black frock-coat 
and yellow kid gloves. He went in a 
hansom, so that the person who opened 
the door should know that he was not a 
brewer’s traveler. In this wise he reach- 
ed Mrs. Kavanagh’s house, which Lav- 
ender had frequently pointed out to 
him in passing, about half-past one, and 
with some internal tremors, but much out- 
ward calmness, went up the broad stone 
steps. 

A small boy in buttons opened the 
door. 

“ Is Mrs. Lorraine at home ?” 

“Yes, sir,” said -the boy. 

It was the simplest thing in the world. 
In a couple of seconds he found himself 
in a big drawing-room, and the youth 
had taken his card up stairs. Ingram 
was not very sure whether his success, 
so far, was due to the hansom, or to his 
tall hat, or to a silver-headed cane which 
his grandfather had brought home from 
India. However, here he was in the 
house, just like the hero of one of those 
fine old farces of our youth, who jumps 
from the street into a strange drawing- 
room, flirts with the maid, hides behind 
a screen, confronts the master, and mar- 
ries his daughter* all in half an hour, the 
most exacting unities of time and place 
being faithfully observed. 

Presently the door was opened, and a 
young lady, pale and calm and sweet of 
face, approached him, and not only bow- 
ed to him, but held out her hand. 

“I have much pleasure in making 
your acquaintance, Mr. Ingram,” she 
said, gently and somewhat slowly. “ Mr. 


Lavender has frequently promised to 
bring you to see us, for he has spoken to 
us so much about you that we had be- 
gun to think we already knew you. Will 
you come with me up stairs, that I may 
introduce you to mamma ?” 

Ingram had come prepared to state 
harsh truths bluntly, and was ready to 
meet any sort of anger or opposition with 
a perfect frankness of intention. But he 
certainly had not come prepared to find 
the smart-tongued and fascinating Amer- 
ican widow, of whom he had heard so 
much, a quiet, self-possessed and gra- 
cious young lady, of singularly winning 
manners and clear and resolutely honest 
eyes. Had Lavender been quite accu- 
rate, or even conscientious, in his gar- 
rulous talk about Mrs. Lorraine ? 

“If you will excuse me,” said Ingram, 
with a smile that had less of embarrass- 
ment about it than he could have ex- 
pected, “ I would rather speak to you for 
a few minutes first. The fact is, I have 
come on a self-imposed errand ; and 
that must be my apology for — for thrust- 
ing myself—” 

“ I am sure no apology is needed,” 
said the girl. “We have always been 
expecting to see you. Will you sit 
down ?” 

He put his hat and his cane on the 
table, and as he did so he recorded a 
mental resolution not to be led away by 
the apparent innocence and sweetness 
of this woman. What a fool he had been , 
to expect her to appear in the guise of 
some forward and giggling coquette, as 
if Frank Lavender, with all his faults, 
could have suffered anything like coarse- 
ness of manners ! But was this woman 
any the less dangerous that she was re- 
fined and courteous, and had the speech 
and bearing of a gentlewoman ? 

“Mrs. Lorraine,” he said, lowering his 
eyebrows somewhat, “ I may as well be 
frank with you. I have come upon an 
unpleasant errand — an affair, indeed, 
which ought to be no business of mine ; 
but sometimes, when you care a little for 
some one, you don’t mind running the 
risk of being treated as an intermeddler. 
You know that I know Mrs. Lavender. 
She is an old friend of mine. She was 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


almost a child when I knew her first, 
and I still have a sort of notion that she 
is a child, and that I should look after 
her, and so — and so — ” 

She sat quite still. There was no sur- 
prise, no alarm, no anger when Sheila’s 
name was mentioned. She was merely 
attentive, but now, seeing that he hesi- 
tated, she said, “ I do not know what you 
have to say, but if it is serious may not 
I ask mamma to join us?” 

“ If you please, no. I would rather 
speak with you alone, as this matter con- 
cerns yourself only. Well, the fact is, I 
have seen for some time back that Mrs. 
Lavender is very unhappy. She is left 
alone ; she knows no one in London ; 
perhaps she does not care to join much 
in those social amusements that her hus- 
band enjoys. I say this poor girl is an 
old friend of mine : I cannot help trying 
to do something to make her less wretch- 
ed ; and so I have ventured to come to 
you to see if you could not assist me. 
Mr. Lavender comes very much to your 
house, and Sheila is left all by herself ; 
and doubtless she begins to fancy that 
her husband is neglectful, perhaps indif- 
ferent to her, and may get to imagine 
things that are quite wrong, you know, 
and that could be explained away by a 
little kindness on your part.” 

Was this, then, the fashion in which 
Jonah had gone up to curse the wicked- 
ness of Nineveh ? As he had spoken 
he had been aware that those sincere, 
somewhat matter-of-fact and far from 
unfriendly eyes that were fixed on him 
had undergone no change whatever. 
Here was no vile creature who would 
start up with a guilty conscience to repel 
the remotest hint of an accusation ; and 
indeed, quite unconsciously to himself, 
he had been led on to ask for her help. 
Not that he feared her. Not that he 
could not have said the harshest things 
to her which there was any reason for 
saying. But somehow there seemed to 
be no occasion for the utterance of any 
cruel truths. 

The wonder of it was, too, that instead 
of being wounded, indignant and angry, 
as he had expected her to be, she be- 
trayed a very friendly interest in Sheila, 


163 

as though she herself had nothing what- 
ever to do with the matter. 

“You have undertaken a very difficult 
task, Mr. Ingram,” she said with a smile. 
“ I don’t think there are many married 
ladies in London who have a friend who 
would do as much for them. And, to 
tell you the truth, both my mamma and 
myself have come to the same conclu- 
sion as yourself about Mr. Lavender. 
It is really too bad, the way in which he 
allows that pretty young thing to remain 
at home, for I suppose she would go 
more into society if he were to coax her 
and persuade her. We have done what 
we could in sending her invitations, in 
calling on her, and in begging Mr. Lav- 
ender to bring her with him. But he 
has always some excuse for her, so that 
we never see her. And yet I am sure 
he does not mean to give her pain ; for 
he is very proud of her, and madly ex- 
travagant wherever she is concerned ; 
and sometimes he takes sudden fits of 
trying to please her and be kind to her 
that are quite odd in their way. Can 
you tell me what we should do ?” 

Ingram looked at her for a moment, 
and said gravely and slowly, “Before 
we talk any more about that I must clear 
my conscience. I perceive that I have 
done you a wrong. I came here pre- 
pared to accuse you of drawing away 
Mr. Lavender from his wife, of seeking 
amusement, and perhaps some social 
distinction, by keeping him continually 
dangling after you ; and I meant to re- 
proach you, or even threaten you, until 
you promised never to see him again.” 

A quick flush, partly of shame and 
partly of annoyance, sprang to Mrs. Lor- 
raine’s fair and pale face ; but she an- 
swered calmly, “It is perhaps as well 
that you did not tell me this a few minutes 
ago. May I ask what has led you to 
change your opinion of me, if it has 
changed ?” 

“Of course it has changed,” he said, 
promptly and emphatically. “ I can see 
that I did you a great injury, and I apol- 
ogize for it, and beg your forgiveness. 
But when you ask me what has led me 
to change my opinion, what am I to say? 
Your manner, perhaps, more than what 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


164 

you : llaVe said has convinced me that I 
was wrong.” 

‘‘Perhaps you are again mistaken,” 
she said coldly: “you get rapidly to 
conclusions.” 

“The reproof is just,” he said. “You 
are quite right. I have made a blunder : 
there is no mistake about it.” 

“But do you think it was fair,” she 
said with some spirit — “do you think it 
was fair to believe all this harm about a 
woman you had never seen ? Now, lis- 
ten. A hundred times I have begged 
Mr. Lavender to be more attentive to his 
wife — not in these words, of course, but 
as directly as I could. Mamma has given 
parties, made arrangements for visits, 
drives and all sorts of things, to tempt 
Mrs. Lavender to come to us, and all in 
vain. Of course you can’t thrust your- 
self on any one like that. Though mam- 
ma and myself like Mrs. Lavender very 
well, it is asking too much that we should 
encounter the humiliation of intermed- 
dling.” 

Here she stopped suddenly, with the 
least show of embarrassment. Then she 
said frankly, “You are an old friend of 
hers. It is very good of you to have 
risked so much for the sake of that girl. 
There are very few gentlemen whom one 
meets who would do as much.” 

Ingram could say nothing, and was a 
little impatient with himself. Was he to 
be first reproved, and then treated with 
an indulgent kindness, by a mere girl ? 

“Mamma,” said Mrs. Lorraine, as an 
elderly lady entered the room, “let me 
introduce to you Mr. Ingram, whom you 
must already know. He proposes we 
should join in some conspiracy to in- 
veigle Mrs. Lavender into society, and 
make the poor little thing amuse her- 
self.” 

“Little!” said Mrs. Kavanagh with a 
smile : “ she is a good deal taller than 
you are, my dear. But I am afraid, Mr. 
Ingram, you have undertaken a hopeless 
task. Will you stay to luncheon and 
talk it over with us ?” 

“ I hope you will,” said Mrs. Lorraine ; 
and naturally enough he consented. 

Luncheon was just ready. As they 
were going into the room on the oppo- 


site side of the hall, the younger lady 
said to Ingram in a quiet undertone, but 
with much indifference of manner, “You 
know, if you think I ought to give up 
Mr. Lavender’s acquaintance altogether, 
I will do so at once. But perhaps that 
will not be necessary.” 

So this was the house in which Sheila’s 
husband spent so much of his time, and 
these were the two ladies of whom so 
much had been said and surmised ? 
There were three of Lavender’s pictures 
on the walls of the dining-room, and as 
Ingram inadvertently glanced at them, 
Mrs. Lorraine said to him, “ Don’t you 
think it is a pity Mr. Lavender should 
continue drawing those imaginative 
sketches of heads ? I do not think, 
myself, that he does himself justice in 
that way. Some bits of landscape, now, 
that I have seen seemed to me to have 
quite a definite character about them, 
and promised far more than anything 
else of his I have seen.” 

“That is precisely, what I think,” said 
Ingram, partly amused and partly an- 
noyed to find that this girl, with her clear 
gray eyes, her soft and musical voice 
and her singular delicacy of manner, 
had an evil trick of saying the very 
things he would himself have said, and 
leaving him with nothing but a helpless 
“Yes.” 

“ I think he ought to have given up his 
club when he married. Most English 
gentlemen do that when they marry, do 
they not?” said Mrs. Kavanagh. 

“Some,” said Ingram. “But a good 
deal of nonsense is talked about the in- 
fluence of clubs in that way. It is really 
absurd to suppose that the size or the 
shape of a building can alter a man’s 
moral character.” 

“It does, though,” said Mrs. Lorraine 
confidently. “ I can tell directly if a 
gentleman has been accustomed to spend 
his time in clubs. When he is surprised 
or angry or impatient you can perceive 
blanks in his conversation which in a 
club, I suppose, would be filled up. 
Don’t you know poor old Colonel Han- 
nen’s way of talking, mamma ? This old 
gentleman, Mr. Ingram, is very fond of 
speaking to you about political liberty 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


and the rights of conscience; and he 
generally becomes so confused that he 
gets vexed with himself, and makes odd 
pauses, as if he were invariably address- 
ing himself in very rude language in- 
deed. Sometimes you would think he 
was like a railway-engine, going blindly 
and helplessly on through a thick and 
choking mist; and you can see that if 
there were no ladies present he would let 
off a few crackers — fog-signals, as it 
were — just to bring himself up a bit, and 
let people know where he was. Then 
he will go on again, talking away until 
you fancy yourself in a tunnel, with a 
throbbing noise in your ears and all the 
daylight shut out, and you perhaps get- 
ting to wish that on the whole you were 
dead.” 

*' Cecilia !” 

“I beg your pardon, mamma,” said 
the younger lady with a quiet smile : 
‘‘you look so surprised that Mr. Ingram 
will give me credit for not often erring 
in that way. You look as though a hare 
had turned and attacked you.” 

‘‘That would give most people a 
fright,” said Ingram with a laugh. He 
was rapidly forgetting the object of his 
mission. The almost childish softness 
of voice of this girl, and the perfect com- 
posure with which she uttered little say- 
ings that showed considerable sharpness 
of observation and a keen enjoyment of 
the grotesque, had an odd sort of fasci- 
nation for him. He totally forgot that 
Lavender had been fascinated by it too. 
If he had been reminded of the fact at 
this moment he would have said that the 
boy had, as usual, got sentimental about 
a pretty pair of big gray eyes and a fine 
profile, while he, Ingram, was possessed 
by nothing but a purely intellectual ad- 
miration of certain fine qualities of 
wit, sincerity of speech and womanly 
shrewdness. 

Luncheon, indeed, was over before 
any mention was made of the Laven- 
ders; and when they returned to that 
subject it appeared to Ingram that their 
relations had in the mean time got to be 
very friendly, and that they were really 
discussing this matter as if they formed 
a little family conclave. 


165 

‘‘I have told Mr. Ingram, mamma,” 
Mrs. Lorraine said, ‘‘that so far as I anr 
concerned I will do whatever he thinks 
I ought to do. Mr. Lavender has been 
a friend of ours for some time, and of 
course he cannot be treated with rude- 
ness or incivility ; but if we are wound- 
ing the feelings of any one by asking 
him to come here — and he certainly 
visited us pretty often — why, it would be 
easy to lessen the number of his calls. 
Is that what we should do, Mr. Ingram ? 
You would not have us quarrel with 
him ?” 

“Especially,” said Mrs. Kavanagh 
with a smile, “that there is no certainty 
he will spend more of his time with his 
wife merely because he spends less of it 
here. And yet I fancy he is a very, 
good-natured man.” 

“He is very good-natured,” said In- 
gram with decision. “ I have known 
him for years, and I know that he is ex- 
ceedingly unselfish, and that he would do 
a ridiculously generous thing to serve a 
friend, and that a better-intentioned fel- 
low does not breathe in the world. But 
he is at times, I admit, very thoughtless 
and inconsiderate.” 

“That sort of good-nature,” said Mrs. 
Lorraine in her gentlest voice, “is very 
good in its way, but rather uncertain. 
So long as it shines in one direction, it 
is all right and quite trustworthy, for you 
want a hard brush to brush sunlight off 
a wall. But when the sunlight shifts, 
you know — ” 

“The wall is left in the cold. Well,” 
said Ingram, “ I am afraid it is impos- 
sible for me to dictate to you what you 
ought to do. I do not wish to draw you 
into any interference between husband 
and wife, or even to let Mr. Lavender 
know that you think he is not treating 
Shei— Mrs. Lavender— properly. But 
if you were to hint to him that he ought 
to pay some attention to her — that he 
should not be going everywhere as if he 
were a young bachelor in chambers ; if 
you would discourage his coming to see 
you without bringing her also, and so forth 
— surely he would see what you mean. 
Perhaps I ask too much of you, but I 
had intended to ask more. The fact is, 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


1 66 

Mrs. Kavanagh, I had done your daugh- 
ter the injustice of supposing — ” 

“ I thought we had agreed to say no 
more about that,” said Mrs. Lorraine 
quickly, and Ingram was silent. 

Half an hour thereafter he was walk- 
ing back through Holland Park, through 
the warm light of an autumn afternoon. 
The place seemed much changed since 
he had seen it a couple of hours before. 
The double curve of big houses had a 
more friendly and hospitable look : the 
very air seemed to be more genial and 
comfortable since he had driven up here 
in the hansom. 

Perhaps Mr. Ingram was at this mo- 
ment a little more perturbed, pleased 
and bewildered than he would have 
liked to confess. He had discovered a 
great deal in these two hours, been much 
surprised and fascinated, and had come 
away fairly stupefied with the result of 
his mission. He had indeed been suc- 
cessful : Lavender would now find a dif- 
ferent welcome awaiting him in the house 
in which he had been spending nearly 
all his time, to the neglect of his wife. 
But the fact is, that as Edward Ingram 
went rapidly over in his own mind every- 
thing that had occurred since his entrance 
into that house, as he anxiously recalled 
the remarks made to him, the tone and 
looks accompanying them, and his own 
replies, it was not of Lavender’s affairs 
alone that he thought. He confessed to 
himself frankly that he had never yet met 
any woman who had so surprised him 
into admiration on their first meeting. 

Yet what had she said ? Nothing very 
particular. W as it the bright intelligence 
of the gray eyes, that seemed to see 
everything he meant with an instant 
quickness, and that seemed to agree with 
him even before he spoke ? He reflect- 
ed, now that he was in the open air, that 
he must have persecuted these two wo- 
men dreadfully. In getting away from 
Lavender’s affairs they had touched on 
pictures, books and what not — on the 
young poet who was playing Alfred de 
Musset in England ; on the great phil- 
osopher who had gone into the House to 
confuse and bewilder the country gentle- 
men there ; on all sorts of topics, indeed, 


except those which, as Ingram had an- 
ticipated, such a creature as Mrs. Lor- 
raine would naturally have found inter- 
esting. And he had to confess to him- 
self that he had lectured his two helpless 
victims most unmercifully. He was quite 
conscious that he sometimes laid down 
the law in an authoritative and even sen-’ 
tentious manner. On first going into the 
house certain things said by Mrs. Lor- 
raine had almost surprised him into a 
mood of mere acquiescence ; but after 
luncheon he had assumed his ordinary 
manner of tutor in general to the uni- 
verse, and had informed those two wo- 
men, in a distinct fashion, what their 
opinions ought to be on half the social 
conundrums of the day. 

He now reflected, with much com- 
punction, that this was highly improper. 
He ought to have asked about flower- 
shows, and inquired whether the prin- 
cess of Wales was looking well of late. 
Some reference to the last Parisian com- 
edy might have introduced a disquisition 
on the new grays and greens of the 
French milliners, with a passing men- 
tion made of the price paid for a pair of 
ponies by a certain marquise unattached. 
He had not spoken of one of these 
things : perhaps he could not if he had 
tried. He remembered, with an awful 
consciousness of guilt, that he had ac- 
tually discoursed of woman suffrage, of 
the public conscience of New York, of 
the extirpation of the Indians, and a 
dozen different things, not only taking no 
heed of any opinions that his audience 
of two might hold, but insisting on their 
accepting his opinions as the expression 
of absolute and incontrovertible truth. 

He became more and more dissatis- 
fied with himself. If he could only go 
back now, he would be much more 
wary, more submissive and complai- 
sant, more anxious to please. What 
right had he to abuse the courtesy and 
hospitality of these two strangers, and 
lecture them on the Constitution of their 
own country ? He was annoyed beyond 
expression that they had listened to him 
with so much patience. 

And yet he could not have seriously 
offended them, for they had earnestly 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


besought him to dine with them on the 
following Tuesday evening, to meet an 
American judge; and when he had 
consented Mrs. Lorraine had written 
down on a card the date and hour, lest 
he should forget. He had that card in 
his pocket: surely he could not have 
offended them ? If he had pursued this 
series of questions, he might have gone 
on to ask himself why he should be so 
anxious not to have offended these two 
new friends. He was not ordinarily 
very sensitive to the opinions that might 
be formed of him — more especially by 
persons living out of his own sphere, 
with whom he was not likely to asso- 
ciate. He did not, indeed, as a general 
rule, suffer himself to be perturbed 
about anything; and yet, as he went 
along the busy thoroughfare at this mo- 
ment, he was conscious that rarely in 
his life had he been so ill at ease. 

Something now occurred that startled 
him out of his reverie. Communing 
with himself, he was staring blankly 
ahead, taking little note of the people 
whom he saw. But somehow, in a vague 
and dreamlike way, he seemed to be- 
come aware that there was some one 
in front of him — a long way ahead as 
yet — whom he knew. He was still 
thinking of Mrs. Lorraine, and uncon- 
sciously postponing the examination of 
this approaching figure, or rather pair 
of figures, when, with a sudden start, 
he found Sheila’s sad and earnest eyes 
fixed upon him. He woke up as from 
a dream. He saw that young Mosen- 
berg was with her, and naturally the 
boy would have approached Ingram, 
and stopped and spoken. But Ingram 
paid no attention to him. He was, with 
a quick pang at his heart, regarding 
Sheila, with the knowledge that on her 
rested the cruel decision as to whether 
she should come forward to him or not. 
He was not aware that her husband 
had forbidden her to have any commu- 
nication with him ; yet he had guessed 
as much, partly from his knowledge of 
Lavender’s impatient disposition, and 
partly from the glance he caught of her 
eyes when he woke up from his trance. 

Young Mosenberg turned with sur- 


1 67 

prise to his companion. She was pass- 
ing on : he did not even see that she 
had bowed to Ingram, with a face flush- 
ed with shame and pain and with eyes 
cast down. Ingram, too, was passing on, 
without even shaking hands with her or 
uttering a word. Mosenberg was too 
bewildered to attempt any protest : he 
merely followed Sheila, with a conviction 
that something desperate had occurred, 
and that he would best consult her feel- 
ings by making no reference to it. 

But that one look that the girl had 
directed to her old friend before she 
bowed and passed on had filled him 
with dismay and despair. It was some- 
how like the piteous look of a wounded 
animal, incapable of expressing its pain. 
All thoughts and fancies of his own 
little vexations or embarrassments were 
instantly banished from him : he could 
only see before him those sad and pit- 
eous eyes, full of kindness to him, he 
thought, and of grief that she should be 
debarred from speaking to him, and of 
resignation to her own lot. 

Gwdyr House did not get much work 
out of him that day. He sat in a small 
room in a back part of the building, 
looking out on a lonely little square, 
silent and ruddy with the reflected light 
of the sunset. 

“A hundred Mrs. Kavanaghs,” he 
was thinking to himself bitterly enough, 
“ will not save my poor Sheila. She will 
die of a broken heart. I can see it in 
her face. And it is I who have done it — 
from first to last it is I who have done it ; 
and now I can do nothing to help her.” 

That became the burden and refrain 
of all his reflections. It was he who 
had done this frightful thing. It was he 
who had taken away the young High- 
land girl, his good Sheila, from her 
home, and ruined her life and broken 
her heart. And he could do nothing to 
help her ! 


CHAPTER XVIII. 
sheila’s stratagem. 

“We met Mr. Ingram to-day,” said 
young Mosenberg ingenuously. 

He was dining with Lavender, not at 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


1 68 

home, but at a club in St. James’s street ; 
and either his curiosity was too great, 
or he had forgotten altogether Ingram’s 
warnings to him that he should hold his 
tongue. 

“Oh, did you ?” said Lavender, show- 
ing no great interest. “Waiter, some 
French mustard. What did Ingram 
say to you ?” 

The question was asked with much 
apparent indifference, and the boy 
stared. “Well,” he said at length, “I 
suppose there is some misunderstand- 
ing between Mrs. Lavender and Mr. In- 
gram, for they both saw each other, 
and they both passed on without speak- 
ing : I was very sorry — yes. I thought 
they were friends — I thought Mr. In- 
gram knew Mrs. Lavender even before 
you did ; but they did not speak to each 
other, not one word.” 

Lavender was in one sense pleased to 
hear this. He liked to hear that his 
wife was obedient to him. But, he said 
to himself with a sharp twinge of con- 
science, she was carrying her obedience 
too far. He had never meant that she 
should not even speak to her old friend, 
fie would show Sheila that he was not 
unreasonable. He would talk to her 
about it as soon as he got home, and in 
as kindly a way as was possible. 

Mosenberg did not play billiards, but 
they remained late in the billiard-room, 
Lavender playing pool, and getting out 
of it rather successfully. He could not 
speak to Sheila that night, but next 
morning, before going out, he did. 

“Sheila,” he said, “Mosenberg told 
me last night that you met Mr. Ingram 
and did not speak to him. Now, I 
didn’t mean anything like that. You 
must not think me unreasonable. All I 
want is, that he shall not interfere with 
our affairs and try to raise some unpleas- 
antness between you and me, such as 
might arise from the interference of 
even the kindest of friends. When you 
meet him outside or at any one’s house, 
I hope you will speak to him just as 
usual.” 

Sheila replied calmly, “ If I am not 
allowed to receive Mr. Ingram here, I 
cannot treat him as a friend elsewhere. 


I would rather not have friends whom I 
can only speak to in the streets." 

“Very well,” said Lavender, wincing 
under the rebuke, but fancying that she 
would soon repent her of this resolve. 
In the mean time, if she would have it 
so, she should have it so. 

So that was an end of this question 
of Mr. Ingram’s interference for the 
present. But very soon — in a couple of 
days, indeed — Lavender perceived the 
change that had been wrought in the 
house in Holland Park to which he had 
been accustomed to resort. 

“Cecilia,” Mrs. Kavanagh had said 
on Ingram’s leaving, “you must not be 
rude to Mr. Lavender.” She knew the 
perfect independence of that gentle 
young lady, and was rather afraid it 
might carry her too far. 

“Of course I shall not be, mamma,” 
Mrs. Lorraine had said. “ Did you ever 
hear of such a courageous act as that 
man coming up to two strangers and 
challenging them, all on behalf of a girl 
married to some one else ? You know 
that was the meaning of his visit. He 
thought I was flirting with Mr. Laven- 
der and keeping him from his wife. I 
wonder how many men there are in 
London who would have walked twenty 
yards to help in such a matter ? ’ 

“ My dear, he may have been in love 
with that pretty young lady before she 
was married.” 

“Oh no,” said the clear-eyed daugh- 
ter quietly, but quite confidently. “ He 
would not be so ready to show his in- 
terest in her if that were so. Either he 
would be modest, and ashamed of his 
rejection, or vain, and attempt to make 
a mystery about it.” 

"Perhaps you are right,” said the 
mother : she seldom found her daughter 
wrong on such points. 

“ I am sure I am right, mamma. He 
talks about her as fondly and frequently 
and openly as a man might talk about 
his own daughter. Besides, you can 
see that he is talking honestly. The 
man couldn’t deceive a child if he were 
to try. You see everything in his 
face.” 

“You seem to have been much inter- 


A PRINCESS OP THULE . 


169 


csted in him,” said Mrs. Kavanagh, 
with no appearance of sarcasm. 

“ Well, I don’t think I meet such men 
often, and that is the truth. Do you ?” 
This was carrying the war into the ene- 
my’s country. 

“I like him very wqJI,” said Mrs. 
Kavanagh. “I think he is honest. I 
do not think he dresses very carefully ; 
and he is perhaps too intent on con- 
vincing you that his opinions are right.” 

“Well, for my part,” said her daugh- 
ter, with just the least tinge of warmth 
in her manner, “ I confess I like a man 
who has opinions, and who is not afraid 
to say so. I don’t find many who have. 
And for his dressing, one gets rather 
tired of men who come to you every 
evening to impress you with the excel- 
lence of their tailor. As if women were 
to be captured by millinery ! Don’t we 
know the value of linen and woolen 
fabrics ?” 

“My dear child, you are throwing 
away your vexation on some one whom 
I don’t know. It isn’t Mr. Lavender?” 

“Oh dear, no! He is not so silly as 
that : he dresses well, but there is per- 
fect freedom about his dress. He is too 
much of an artist to sacrifice himself to 
his clothes.” 

“ I am glad you have a good word for 
him at last. I think you have been 
rather hard on him since Mr. Ingram 
called ; and that is the reason I asked 
you to be careful.” 

She was quite careful, but as explicit 
as good manners would allow. Mrs. 
Lorraine was most particular in asking 
about Mrs. Lavender, and in expressing 
her regret that they so seldom saw her. 

“She has been brought up in the 
country, you know,” said Lavender with 
a smile ; “and there the daughters of a 
house are taught a number of domestic 
duties that they would consider it a sin 
to neglect. She would be unhappy if 
you caused her to neglect them : she 
would take her pleasure with a bad con- 
science.” 

“But she cannot be occupied with 
them all day.” 

“My dear Mrs. Lorraine, how often 
have we discussed the question ! And 


you know you have me at a disadvan- 
tage, for how can I describe to you what 
those mysterious duties are ? I only 
know that she is pretty nearly always 
busy with something or other; and in 
the evening, of course, she is generally 
too tired to think of going out any- 
where.” 

“Oh, but you must try to get her out. 

Next Tuesday, now, Judge is going 

to dine with us, and you know how 
amusing he is. If you have no other 
engagement, couldn’t you bring Mrs. 
Lavender to dine with us on that even- 
ing ?” 

Now, on former occasions something 
of the same sort of invitation had fre- 
quently been given, and it was gene- 
rally answered by Lavender giving an 
excuse for his wife, and promising to 
come himself. What was his astonish- 
ment to find Mrs. Lorraine plainly and 
most courteously intimating that the in- 
vitation was addressed distinctly to Mr. 
and Mrs. Lavender as a couple ! When 
he regretted that Mrs. Lavender could 
not come, she said quietly, “ Oh, I am 
so sorry ! You would have met an old 
friend of yours here, as well as the 
judge — Mr. Ingram.” 

Lavender made no further sign of sur- 
prise or curiosity than to lift his eye- 
brow's and say, “ Indeed !” 

But when he left the house certain 
dark suspicions were troubling his mind. 
Nothing had been said as to the manner 
in which Ingram had made the ac- 
quaintance of Mrs. Kavanagh and her 
daughter, but there w'as that in Mrs. 
Lorraine’s manner which convinced 
Lavender that something had happened. 
Had Ingram carried his interference to 
the < extent of complaining to them ? 
Had he overcome a repugnance which 
he had repeatedly admitted, and thrust 
himself upon these two people for this 
very purpose of making him, Lavender, 
odious and contemptible ? Lavender’s 
cheeks burned as he thought of this pos- 
sibility. Mrs. Lorraine had been most 
courteous to him, but the longer he 
dwelt on these vague surmises the deep- 
er grew his consciousness that he had 
been turned out of the place, morally 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


170 

if not physically. What was that excess 
of courtesy but a cloak ? If she had 
meant less, she would have been more 
careless ; and all through the interview 
he had remarked that, instead of the 
free warfare of talk that generally went 
on between them, Mrs. Lorraine was 
most formally polite and apparently 
watchful of her words. 

He went home in a passion, which 
was all the more consuming that it could 
not be vented on any one. As Sheila 
had not spoken to Ingram — as she had 
even nerved herself to wound him by 
passing him without notice in the street 
— she could not be held responsible ; 
and yet he wished that he could have 
upbraided some one for this mischief 
that had been done. Should he go 
straight down to Ingram’s lodgings and 
have it out with him ? At first he was 
strongly inclined to do so, but wiser 
counsels prevailed. Ingram had a keen 
and ready tongue, and a way of saying 
things that made them rankle afterward 
in the memory. Besides, he would go 
into court with a defective case. He 
could say nothing unless Ingram admit- 
ted that he had tried to poison the mind 
of Mrs. Lorraine against him ; and of 
course if there was a quarrel, who would 
be so foolish as to make such an admis- 
sion ? Ingram would laugh at him, 
would refuse to admit or deny, would 
increase his anger without affording him 
an opportunity of revenging himself. 

Sheila could see that her husband was 
troubled, but could not divine the cause, 
and had long ago given up any habit of 
inquiry. He ate his dinner almost in 
silence, and then said he had to make a 
call on a friend, and that he would per- 
haps drop in to the club on his way 
home, so that she was not to sit up for 
him. She was not surprised or hurt at 
the announcement. She was accustom- 
ed to spend her evenings alone. She 
fetched down his cigar-case, put it in his 
top-coat pocket and brought him the 
coat. Then he kissed her and went out. 

But this evening, at least, she had 
abundant occupation, and that of a suf- 
ficiently pleasant kind. For some little 
time she had been harboring in her 


mind a dark and mysterious plot, ana 
she was glad of an opportunity to think 
it out and arrange its details. Mairi 
was coming to London, and she had 
carefully concealed the fact from her 
husband. A little surprise of a dramatic 
sort was to be*prepared for him — with 
what result, who could tell ? All of a 
sudden Lavender was to be precipitated 
into the island of Lewis as nearly as 
that could be imitated in a house at Not- 
ting Hill. 

This was Sheila’s scheme, and on 
these lonely evenings she could sit by 
herself with much satisfaction and pon- 
der over the little points of it and its pos- 
sible success. Mairi was coming to Lon- 
don under the escort of a worthy Glas- 
gow fishmonger whom Mr. Mackenzie 
knew. She would arrive after Lavender 
had left for his studio. Then she and 
Sheila would set to work to transform 
the smoking-room, that was sometimes 
called a library, into something resem- 
bling the quaint little drawing-room in 
Sheila’s home. Mairi was bringing up 
a quantity of heather gathered fresh 
from the rocks beside the White Water ; 
she was bringing up some peacocks’ 
feathers, too, for the mantelpiece, and 
two or three big shells ; and, best of all, 
she was to put in her trunk a real and 
veritable lump of peat, well dried and 
easy to light. Then you must know 
that Sheila had already sketched out 
the meal that was to be placed on the 
table so soon as the room had been done 
up in Highland fashion and this peat lit 
so as to send its fragrant smoke abroad. 
A large salmon was to make its appear- 
ance first of all. There would be bot- 
tles of beer on the table ; also one of 
those odd bottles of Norwegian make, 
filled with whisky. And when Laven- 
der went with wonder into this small 
room, when he smelt the fragrant peat- 
smoke — and every one knows how pow- 
erful the sense of smell is in recalling 
bygone associations — when he saw the 
smoking salmon and the bottled beer 
and the whisky, and when he suddenly 
found Mairi coming into the room and 
saying to him, in her sweet Highland 
fashion, “ And are you ferry well, sir ?” 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


— would not his heart warm to the old 
ways and kindly homeliness of the house 
in Borva, and would not some glimpse 
of the happy and half-forgotten time 
that was now so sadly and strangely 
remote cause him to break down that 
barrier between himself and Sheila that 
this artificial life in the South had placed 
there ? 

So the child dreamed, and was happy 
in dreaming of it. Sometimes she grew 
afraid of her project : she had not had 
much experience in deception, and the 
mere concealment of Mairi’s coming 
was a hard thing to bear. But surely 
her husband would take this trick in 
good part. It was only, after all, a joke. 
To put a little barbaric splendor of dec- 
oration into the little smoking-room, 
to have a scent of peat-smoke in the 
air, and to have a timid, sweet-voiced, 
pretty Highland girl suddenly make 
her appearance, with an odor of the sea 
about her, as it were, and a look of fresh 
breezes in the color of her cheeks, — 
what mortal man could find fault with 
this innocent jest? Sheila’s moments 
of doubt were succeeded by long hours 
of joyous confidence, in which a hap- 
py light shone on her face. She went 
through the house with a brisk step ; she 
sang to herself as she went ; she was 
kinder than ever to the small children 
who came into the square every fore- 
noon, and whose acquaintance she had 
very speedily made ; she gave each of 
her crossing-sweepers threepence in- 
stead of twopence in passing. The 
servants had never seen her in such 
good spirits ; she was exceptionally gen- 
erous in presenting them with articles of 
attire ; they might have had half the 
week in holidays if Mr. Lavender had 
not to be attended to. A small gentle- 
man of three years of age lived next 
door, and his acquaintance also she had 
made by means of his nurse. At this 
time his stock of toys, which Sheila had 
kept carefully renewed, became so big 
that he might, with proper management, 
have set up a stall in the Lowther Arcade. 

Just before she left Lewis her father 
had called her to him, and said, “Sheila, 
I wass wanting to tell you about some- 


171 

thing. It is not every one that will care 
to hef his money given away to poor 
folk, and it wass many a time I said to 
myself that when you were married 
maybe your husband would think you 
were giving too much money to the 
poor folk, as you wass doing in Borva. 
And it iss this fifty pounds I hef got for 
you, Sheila, in ten banknotes, and you 
will take them with you for your own 
money, that you will not hef any trouble 
about giving things to people. And 
when the fifty pounds will be done, I 
will send you another fifty pounds ; and 
it will be no difference to me whatever. 
And if there is any one in Borva you 
would be for sending money to, there is 
your own money ; for there is many a 
one would take the money from Sheila 
Mackenzie that would not be for taking 
it from an English stranger in London. 
And when you will send it to them, you 
will send it to me ; and I will tek it to 
them, and will tell them that this money 
is from my Sheila, and from no one else 
whatever.” 

This was all the dowry that Sheila 
carried with her to the South. Mac- 
kenzie would willingly have given her 
half his money, if she would have taken 
it or if her husband had desired it ; but 
the old King of Borva had profound 
and far-reaching schemes in his head 
about the small fortune he might oth- 
erwise have accorded to his daughter. 
This wealth, such as it was, was to be a 
magnet to draw this young English gen- 
tleman back to the Hebrides. It was 
all very well for Mr. Lavender to have 
plenty of money at present: he might 
not always have it. Then the time 
would come for Mackenzie to say, “ Look 
here, young man : I can support myself 
easily and comfortably by my farming 
and fishing. The money I have saved 
is at your disposal so long as you con- 
sent to remain in Lewis — in Stornoway 
if you please, elsewhere if you please — 
only in Lewis. And while you are 
painting pictures, and making as much 
money as you can that way, you can 
have plenty of fishing and shooting and 
amusement; and my guns and boats 
and rods are all at your service.” Mr. 


172 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


Mackenzie considered that no man could 
resist such an offer. 

Sheila, of course, told her husband of 
the sum of money she owned, and for a 
longtime it was a standing joke between 
them. He addressed her with much re- 
spect, and was careful to inform her of 
the fluctuations of the money-market. 
Sometimes he borrowed a sovereign of 
her, and never without giving her an 
I O U, which was faithfully reclaimed. 
But by and by she perceived that he 
grew less and less to like the mention of 
this money. Perhaps it resembled too 
closely the savings which the over-cau- 
tious folks about Borvabost would not 
entrust to a bank, but kept hid about 
their huts in the heel of a stocking. At 
all events, Sheila saw that her husband 
did not like her to go to this fund for her 
charities ; and so the fifty pounds that 
her father had given her lasted a long 
time. During this period of jubilation, 
in which she looked forward to touching 
her husband’s heart by an innocent little 
stratagem, more frequent appeals were 
made to the drawer in which the treasure 
was locked up, so that in the end her 
private dowry was reduced to thirty 
pounds. 

If Ingram could have but taken part 
in this plan of hers ! The only regret 
that was mingled with her anticipations 
of a happier future concerned this faith- 
ful friend of hers, who seemed to have 
been cut off from them for ever. And 
it soon became apparent to her that her 
husband, so far from inclining to forget 
the misunderstanding that had arisen 
between Ingram and himself, seemed to 
feel increased resentment, insomuch that 
she was most careful to avoid mention- 
ing his name. 

She was soon to meet him, however. 
Lavender was resolved that he would 
not appear to have retired from the field 
merely because Ingram had entered it. 
He would go to this dinner on the Tues- 
day evening, and Sheila would accompa- 
ny him. First, he asked her. Much as 
she would have preferred not visiting 
these particular people, she cheerfully 
acquiesced : she was not going to be 
churlish or inconsiderate on the very 


eve of her dramatic coup. Then he 
went to Mrs. Lorraine and said he had 
persuaded Sheila to come with him ; 
and the young American lady and her 
mamma were good enough to say how 
glad they were she had come to this de- 
cision. They appeared to take it for 
granted that it was Sheila alone who 
had declined former invitations. 

“ Mr. Ingram will be there on Tues- 
day evening,” said Lavender to his wife. 

“ I was not aware he knew them,” 
said Sheila, remembering, indeed, how 
scrupulously Ingram had refused to 
know them. 

He has made their acquaintance for 
his own purposes, doubtless,” said Lav- 
ender. ” I suppose he will appear in a 
frock-coat, with a bright blue tie, and he 
will say 4 Sir ’ to the waiters when he 
does not understand them.” 

44 1 thought you said Mr. Ingram be- 
longed to a very good family,” said 
Sheila quietly. 

44 That is so. But each man is respon- 
sible for his own manners; and as all 
the society he sees consists of a cat and 
some wooden pipes in a couple of dingy 
rooms in Sloane street, you can’t expect 
him not to make an ass of himself.” 

44 1 have never seen him make him- 
self ridiculous : I do not think it possi- 
ble,” said Sheila, with a certain precision 
of speech which Lavender had got to 
know meant much. 44 But that is a mat- 
ter for himself. Perhaps you will tell me 
what I am to do when I meet him at 
Mrs. Kavanagh’s house.” 

44 Of course you must meet him as you 
would any one else you know. If you 
don’t wish to speak to him, you need 
not do so. Saying 4 Good-evening ’ costs 
nothing.” 

"If he takes me into dinner?” she 
asked calmly. 

44 Then you must talk to him as you 
would to’ any stranger,” he said impa- 
tiently. 44 Ask him if he has been to 
the opera, and he won’t know there is 
no opera going on. Tell him that town 
is very full, and he won’t know that 
everybody has left. Say you may meet 
him again at Mrs. Kavanagh’s, and you’ll 
see that he doesn’t know they mean to 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


173 


start for the Tyrol in a fortnight. I 
think you and I must also be settling 
soon where we mean to go. I don’t 
think we could do better than go to the 
Tyrol.” 

She did not answer. It was clear that 
he had given up all intention of going 
up to Lewis, for that year at least. But 
she would not beg him to alter his de- 
cision just yet. Mairi was coming, and 
that experiment of the enchanted room 
had still to be tried. 

As tliey drove round to Mrs. Kava- 
nagh’s house on that Tuesday evening, 
she thought, with much bitterness of 
heart, of the possibility of her having to 
meet Mr. Ingram in the fashion her hus- 
band had suggested. Would it not be 
better, if he did take her in to dinner, 
to throw herself entirely on his mercy, 
and ask him not to talk to her at all ? 
She would address herself, when there 
was a chance, to her neighbor on the 
other side : if she remained silent alto- 
gether, no great harm would be done. 

When she went into the drawing- 
room her first glance round was for him, 
and he was the first person whom she 
saw ; for, instead of withdrawing into 
a corner to make one neighbor the vic- 
tim of his shyness, or concealing his 
embarrassment in studying the photo- 
graphic albums, Mr. Ingram was coolly 
standing on the hearth-rug, with both 
hands in his trousers pockets, while he 
was engaged in giving the American 
judge a great deal of authoritative in- 
formation about America. The judge 
was a tall, fair, stout, good-natured 
man, fond of joking and a good dinner, 
and he was content at this moment to 
sit quietly in an easy-chair, with a pleas- 
ant smile on his face, and be lectured 
about his own country by this sallow 
little man, whom he took to be a pro- 
fessor of modern history at some college 
or other. 

Ingram, as soon as he found that 
Sheila was in the room, relieved her 
from any doubt as to his intentions. 
He merely came forward, shook hands 
with her, and said, “ How do you do, 
Mrs. Lavender ?” and went back to the 
judge. She might have been an ac- 


quaintance of yesterday or a friend of 
twenty years’ standing: no one could 
tell by his manner. As for Sheila, she 
parted with his hand reluctantly. She 
tried to look, too, what she dared not 
say ; but whatever of regret and kind- 
ness and assurance of friendship was in 
her eyes he did not see. He scarcely 
glanced at her face : he went off at 
once, and plunged again into the Cin- 
cinnati Convention. 

Mrs. Kavanagh and Mrs. Lorraine 
were exceedingly and almost obtrusive- 
ly kind to her, but she scarcely heard 
what they said to her. It seemed so 
strange and so sad to her that her old 
friend should be standing near her, and 
she so far removed from him that she 
dared not go and speak to him. She 
could not understand it sometimes : 
everything around her seemed to get 
confused, until she felt as if she were 
sinking in a great sea, and could utter 
but one despairing cry as she saw the 
light disappear above her head. When 
they went in to dinner she saw that Mr. 
Ingram’s seat was on Mrs. Lorraine’s 
right hand, and, although she could 
hear him speak, as he was almost right 
opposite to her, it seemed to her that his 
voice sounded as if it were far away. The 
man who had taken her in was a tall, 
brown-whiskered and faultlessly-dressed 
person who never spoke, so that she 
was allowed to sit and listen to the con- 
versation between Mrs. Lorraine and 
Ingram. They appeared to be on ex- 
cellent terms. You would have fancied 
they had known each other for years. 
And as Sheila sat and saw how pre- 
occupied and pleased with his compan- 
ion Mr. Ingram was, perhaps now and 
again the bitter question arose to her 
mind whether this woman, who had 
taken away her husband, was seeking 
to take away her friend also. Sheila 
knew nothing of all that had happened 
within these past few days. She knew 
only that she was alone, without either 
husband or friend, and it seemed to her 
that this pale American girl had taken 
both away from her. 

Ingram was in one of his happiest 
moods, and was seeking to prove to Mrs. 


174 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


Lorraine that this present dinner-party- 
ought to be an especially pleasant one. 
Everybody was going away somewhere, 
and of course she must know that the 
expectation of traveling was much more 
delightful than the reality of it. What 
could surpass the sense of freedom, of 
power, of hope enjoyed by the happy 
folks who sat down to an open atlas 
and began to sketch out routes for their 
coming holidays ? Where was he going ? 
Oh, he was going to the North. Had 
Mrs. Lorraine never seen Edinburgh 
Castle rising out of a gray fog, like the 
ghost of some great building belonging 
to the times of Arthurian romance ? 
Had she never seen the northern twi- 
lights, and the awful gloom and wild 
colors of Loch Coruisk and the Skye 
hills ? There was no holiday-making so 
healthy, so free from restraint, as that 
among the far Highland hills and glens, 
where the clear mountain-air, scented 
with miles and miles of heather, seemed 
to produce a sort of intoxication of good 
spirits within one. Then the yachting 
round the wonderful islands of the West 
— the rapid runs of a bright forenoon, 
the shooting of the wild sea-birds, the 
scrambled dinners in the small cabin, 
the still nights in the small harbors, with 
a scent of sea-weed abroad, and the 
white stars shining down on the trem- 
bling water. Yes, he was going yacht- 
ing this autumn : in about a fortnight he 
hoped to start. His friend was at present 
away up Loch Boisdale, in South Uist, 
and he did not know how to get there 
except by going to Skye, and taking his 
chance of some boat going over. Where 
would they go then ? He did not know. 
Wherever his friend liked. It would be 
enough for him if they kept always 
moving about, seeing the strange sights 
of the sea and the air and the lonely 
shores of those northern islands. Per- 
haps they might even try to reach St. 
Hilda— 

“Oh, Mr. Ingram, won’t you go and 
see my papa ?” 

The cry that suddenly reached him 
was like the cry of a broken heart. He 
started as from a trance, and found 
Sheila regarding him with a piteous ap- 


peal in her face : she had been listening 
intently to all he had said. 

“Oh yes, Sheila,” he said kindly, and 
quite forgetting that he was speaking to 
her before strangers : “ of course I must 
go and see your papa if we are any way 
near the Lewis. Perhaps you may be 
there then ?” 

“No,” said Sheila, looking down. 

“ Won’t you go to the Highlands this 
autumn ?” Mrs. Lorraine asked in a 
friendly way. 

“ No,” said Sheila in a measured voice 
as she looked her enemy fair in the face : 
“ I think we are going to the Tyrol.” 

If the chil(J had only known what 
occurred to Mrs. Lorraine’s mind at this 
moment! Not a triumphant sense of 
Lavender’s infatuation, as Sheila prob- 
ably fancied, but a very definite resolu- 
tion that if Frank Lavender went to the 
Tyrol, it was not with either her or hei 
mother he should go. 

"Mrs. Lavender’s father is an old 
friend of mine,” said Ingram, loud 
enough for all to hear ; “ and, hospitable 
as all Highlanders are, I have never 
met his equal in that way, and I have 
tried his patience a good many times. 
What do you think, Mrs. Lorraine, of a 
man who would give up his best gun to 
you, even though you couldn’t shoot a 
bit, and he particularly proud of his 
shooting? And so if you lived with 
him for a month or six months — each 
day the best of everything for you, the 
second best for your friend, the worst 
for himself. Wasn’t it so, Lavender?” 

It was a direct challenge sent across 
the table, and Sheila’s heart beat quick 
lest her husband should say something 
ungracious. 

“Yes, certainly,” said Lavender with 
a readiness that pleased Sheilq. '' I, at 
least, have no right to complain ol his 
hospitality.” 

“Your papa is a very handsome man,” 
said Mrs. Lorraine to Sheila, bringing 
the conversation back to their own end 
of the table. “ I have seen few finer 
heads than that drawing you have. Mr. 
Lavender did that, did he not? Why 
has he never done one of you ?” 

“ He is too busy, I think, just now,” 


A PRINCESS OF THUVE. 


175 


Sheila said, perhaps not knowing that 
from Mrs. Lorraine’s waist-belt at that 
moment depended a fan which might 
have given evidence as to the extreme 
scarcity of time under which Lavender 
was supposed to labor. 

"He has a splendid head,” said In- 
gram. “ Did you know that he is called 
the King of Borva up there ?” 

“ I have heard of him being called 
the King of Thule,” said Mrs. Lorraine, 
turning with a smile to Sheila, " and of 
his daughter being styled a princess. 
Do you know the ballad of the King of 
Thule in Faust, Mrs. Lavender?’ ” 

" In the opera ? — yes,” said Sheila. 

"Will you sing it for us after dinner?” 

" If you like.” 

The promise was fulfilled, in a fashion. 
The notion that Mr. Ingram was about 
to go away up to Lewis, to the people 
who knew her and to her father’s house, 
with no possible answer to the questions 
which would certainly be showered upon 
him as to why she had not come also, 
troubled Sheila deeply. The ladies went 
into the drawing-room, and Mrs. Lor- 
raine got out the song. Sheila sat down 
to the piano, thinking far more of that 
small stone house at Borva than of the 
King of Thule’s castle overlooking the 
sea ; and yet somehow the first lines of 
the song, though she knew them well 
enough, sent a pang to her heart as she 
glanced at them. She touched the first 
notes of the accompaniment, and she 
looked at the words again : 

Over the sea, in Thule of old, 

Reigned a king who was true-hearted. 

Who, in remembrance of one departed — 

A mist came over her eyes. Was she 
the one who had departed, leaving the 
old king in his desolate house by the sea, 
where he could only think of her as he 
sat in his solitary chamber, with the 
night-winds howling round the shore 
outside ? When her birthday had come 
round she knew that he must have silent- 
ly drank to her, though not out of a 
beaker of gold. And now, when mere 
friends and acquaintances were free to 
speed away to the North, and get a wel- 
come from the folks in Borva, and listen 
to the Atlantic waves dashing lightly in 


among the rocks, her hope of getting 
thither had almost died out. Among 
such people as landed on Stornoway 
quay from the big Clansman her father 
would seek one face, and seek it in vain. 
And Duncan and Scarlett, and even 
John the Piper — all the well-remembered 
folks who lived far away across the 
Minch — they would ask why Miss Sheila 
was never coming back. 

Mrs. Lorraine had been standing aside 
from the piano. Noticing that Sheila 
had played the introduction to the song 
twice over in an undetermined manner, 
she came forward a step or two and pre- 
tended to be looking at the music. Tears 
were running down Sheila’s face. Mrs. 
Lorraine put her hand on the girl’s 
shoulder, and sheltered her from obser- 
vation, and said aloud, "You have it in 
a different key, have you not? Pray 
don’t sing it. Sing something else. Do 
you know any of Gounod’s sacred songs ? 
Let me see if we can find anything for 
you in this volume.” 

They were a long time finding any- 
thing in that volume. When they did 
find it, behold ! it was one of Mrs. Lor- 
raine’s songs, and that young lady said 
if Mrs. Lavender would only allow her- 
self to be superseded for a few minutes — 
And so Sheila walked, with her head 
down, to the conservatory, which was at 
the other end of the piano; and Mrs. 
Lorraine not only sung this French song, 
but sang every one of the verses ; and 
at the end of it she had quite forgotten 
that Sheila had promised to sing. 

"You are very sensitive,” she said to 
Sheila, coming into the conservatory. 

"I am very stupid,” Sheila said with 
her face burning. " But it is a long time 
since I will see the Highlands — and Mr. 
Ingram was talking of the places I know 
— and — and so—” 

" I understand well enough,” said Mrs. 
Lorraine tenderly, as if Sheila were a 
mere child in her hands. "But you 
must not get your eyes red. You have 
to sing some of those Highland songs 
for us yet, when the gentlemen come in. 
Come up to my room and I will make 
your eyes all right. Oh, do not be afraid ! 
I shall not bring you down like Lady 


12 


176 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


Leveret. Did you ever see anything 
like that woman’s face to-night ? It re- 
minds me of the window of an oil-and- 
color shop. I wonder she does not catch 
flies with her cheeks.” 

So all the people, Sheila learned that 
night, were going away from London, 
and soon she and her husband would 
join in the general stampede of the very 
last dwellers in town. But Mairi ? What 
was to become of her after that little plot 
had been played out ? * Sheila could not 
leave Mairi to see London by herself : 
she had been enjoying beforehand the 
delight of taking the young girl about 
and watching the wonder of her eyes. 
Nor could she fairly postpone Mairi’s 
visit, and Mairi was coming up in an- 
other couple of days. 

On the morning on which the visitor 
from the far Hebrides was to make her 
appearance in London, Sheila felt con- 
scious of a great hypocrisy in bidding 
good-bye to her husband. On some ex- 
cuse or other she had had breakfast 
ordered early, and he found himself 
ready at half-past nine to go out for the 
day. 

“Frank,” she said, “will you come in 
to lunch at two ?” 

“Why?” he asked: he did not often 
have luncheon at home. 

“ I will go into the Park with you in 
the afternoon if you like,” she said : all 
the scene had been diligently rehearsed 
on one side, before. 

Lavender was a little surprised, but he 
was in an amiable mood. 

“All right!” he said. “Have some- 
thing with olives in it. Two, sharp.” 

With that he went out, and Sheila, 
with a wild commotion at her heart, saw 
him walk away through the square. She 
was afraid Mairi might have arrived 
before he left. And, indeed, he had not 
gone above a few minutes when a four- 
wheeler drove up, and an elderly man 
got out and waited for the timid-faced 
girl inside to alight. With a rush like 
that of a startled deer, Sheila was down 
the stairs, along the hall and on the 
pavement ; and it was, “ Oh, Mairi ! and 
have you come at last? And are you 
very well ? And how are all the people 


in Borva? And Mr. M’Alpine, how 
are you? and will you come into the 
house ?” 

Certainly, that was a strange sight for 
a decorous London square — the mistress 
of a house, a young girl with bare head, 
coming out on the pavement to shake 
hands in a frantic fashion with a young 
maid-servant and an elderly man whose 
clothes had been pretty well tanned by 
sunlight and sea-water! And Sheila 
would herself help to carry Mairi’s lug- 
gage in. And she would take no denial 
from Mr. M’Alpine, whose luggage was 
also carried in. And she would herself 
pay the cabman, as strangers did not 
know about these things, Sheila’s know- 
ledge being exhibited by her hastily giv- 
ing the man five shillings for driving 
from Euston Station. And there was 
breakfast waiting for them both as soon 
as Mairi could get her face washed ; and 
would Mr. M’Alpine have a glass of 
whisky after the night’s traveling ? — and 
it was very good whisky whatever, as it 
had come all the way from Stornoway. 
Mr. M’Alpine was nothing loath. 

“And wass you pretty well, Miss 
Sheila?” said Mairi, looking timidly and 
hastily up, and forgetting altogether that 
Sheila had another name now. “ It will 
be a great thing for me to go back to sa 
Lewis, and tell them I wass seeing you, 
and you wass looking so well. And I 
will be thinking I wass nefler coming to 
any one I knew any more; and it is a 
great fright I hef had since we came 
away from sa Lewis ; and I wass think- 
ing we would neffer find you among all 
sa people and so far away across sa sea 
and sa land. Eh — !” The girl stopped 
in astonishment. Her eyes had wan- 
dered up to a portrait on the walls ; and 
here, in this very room, after she had 
traveled over all this great distance, 
apparently leaving behind her every- 
thing but the memory of her home, was 
Mr. Mackenzie himself, looking at her 
from under his shaggy eyebrows. 

“You must have seen that picture in 
Borva, Mairi,” Sheila said. “ Now come 
with me, like a good girl, and get your- 
self ready for breakfast. Do you know, 
Mairi, it does my heart good to hear you 


A PRINCESS OP THULE. 


177 


talk again ? I don’t think I shall be able 
to let you go back to the Lewis.” 

“ But you hef changed ferry much in 
your way of speaking, Miss — Mrs. Lav- 
ender,” said Mairi with an effort. ‘‘You 
will speak just like sa English now.” 

‘‘The English don’t say so,” replied 
Sheila with a smile, leading the way up 
stairs. 

Mr. M’Alpine had his business to at- 
tend to, but, being a sensible man, he 
took advantage of the profuse breakfast 
placed before him. Mairi was a little 
too frightened and nervous and happy 
to eat much, but Mr. M’Alpine was an 
old traveler, not to be put out by the 
mere meeting of two girls. He listened 
in a grave and complacent manner to 
the rapid questions and answers of Mairi 
and her hostess, but he himself was too 
busy to join in the conversation much. 
At the end of breakfast he accepted, 
after a little pressing, half a glass of 
whisky ; and then, much comforted and 
in a thoroughly good-humor with him- 
self and the world, got his luggage out 
again and went on his way toward a 
certain inn in High Holborn. 

“ Ay, and where does the queen live, 
Miss Sheila ?” said Mairi. She had been 
looking at the furniture in Sheila’s house, 
and wondering if the queen lived in a 
place still more beautiful than this. 

‘‘A long way from here.” 

‘‘And it iss no wonder,” said Mairi, 
“ she will neffer hef been in sa Lewis. I 
wass neffer thinking the world wass so 
big, and it wass many a time since me 
and Mr. M’Alpine hef come away from 
Styornoway I wass thinking it wass too 
far for me effer to get back again. But 
it is many a one will say to me, before I 
hef left the Lewis, that I wass not to come 
home unless you wass coming too, and 
I wass to bring you back with me, Miss 
Sheila. And where is Bras, Miss Sheila ?” 

‘‘You will see him by and by. He 
is out in the garden now.” She said 
“gyarden” without knowing it. 

“And will he understood the Gaelic 
fet ?” 

“Oh yes,” Sheila said. “And he is 
:ure to remember you.” 

There was no mistake about that. 


When Mairi went into the back garden 
the demonstrations of delight on the part 
of the great deerhound were as pro- 
nounced as his dignity and gravity would 
allow. And Mairi fairly fell upon his 
neck and kissed him, and addressed to 
him a hundred endearing phrases in 
Gaelic, every word of which it was quite 
obvious that the dog understood. Lon- 
don was already beginning to be less 
terrible to her. She had met and talked 
with Sheila. Here was Bras. A por- 
trait of the King of Borva was hung up 
inside, and all round the rooms were 
articles which she had known in the 
North, before Sheila had married and 
brought them away into this strange 
land. 

“You have never asked after my hus- 
band, Mairi,” said Sheila, thinking she 
would confuse the girl. 

But Mairi was not confused. Probably 
she had been fancying that Mr. Laven- 
der was down at the shore, or had gone 
out fishing, or something of that sort, 
and would return soon enough. It was 
Sheila, not he, whom she was concerned 
about. Indeed, Mairi had caught up a 
little of that jealousy of Lavender which 
was rife among the Borva folks. They 
would speak no ill of Mr. Lavender. 
The young gentleman whom Miss Sheila 
had chosen had by that very fact a claim 
upon their respect. Mr. Mackenzie’s 
son-in-law was a person of importance. 
And yet in their secret hearts they bore 
a grudge against him. What right had 
he to come away up to the North and 
carry off the very pride of the island ? 
Were English girls not good enough for 
him, that he must needs come up and 
take away Sheila Mackenzie, and keep 
her there in the South so that her friends 
and acquaintances saw no more of her ? 
Before the marriage Mairi had a great 
liking and admiration for Mr. Lavender. 
She was so pleased to see Miss Sheila 
pleased that she approved of the young 
man, and thanked him in her heart for 
making her cousin and mistress so ob- 
viously happy. Perhaps, indeed, Mairi 
managed to fall in love with him a little 
bit herself, merely by force of example 
and through sympathy with Sheila ; and 


i 7 8 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


she was rapidly forming very good opin- 
ions of the English race and their ways 
and their looks. But when Lavender 
took away Sheila from Borva a change 
came over Mairi’s sentiments. She grad- 
ually fell in with the current opinions of 
the island — that it was a great pity Sheila 
had not married young Mr. MacIntyre 
of Sutherland, or some one who would 
have allowed her to remain among her 
own people. Mairi began to think that 
the English, though they were handsome 
and good-natured and free with their 
money, were on the whole a selfish race, 
inconsiderate and forgetful of promises. 
She began to dislike the English, and 
wished they would stay in their own 
country, and not interfere with other 
people. 

“I hope he is very well,” said Mairi 
dutifully : she could at least say that 
honestly. 

‘‘You will see him at two o’clock. He 
is coming in to luncheon ; and he does 
not know you are here, and you are to 
be a great surprise to him, Mairi. And 
there is to be a greater surprise still ; for 
we are going to make one of the rooms 
into the drawing-room at home; and 
you must open your boxes, and bring 
me down the heather and the peat, Mairi, 
and the two bottles ; and then, you know, 
when the salmon is on the table, and the 
whisky and the beer, and Bras lying on 
the hearth-rug, and the peat-smoke all 
through the room, then you will come in 
and shake hands with him, and he will 
think he is in Borva again.” 

Mairi was a little puzzled. She did 
not understand the intention of this 
strange thing. But she went and fetched 
the materials she had brought with her 
from Lewis, and Sheila and she set to 
work. 

It was a pleasant enough occupation 
for this bright forenoon, and Sheila, as 
she heard Mairi’s sweet Highland speech, 
and as she brought from all parts of the 
house the curiosities sent her from the 
Hebrides, would almost have fancied she 
was superintending a “cleaning” of 
that museum-like little drawing-room at 
Borva. Skins of foxes, seals and deer, 
stuffed eagles and strange fishes, masses 


of coral and wonderful carvings in wood 
brought from abroad, shells of every 
size from every clime,— all these were 
brought together into Frank Lavender’s 
smoking-room. The ordinary orna- 
ments of the mantelpiece gave way to 
fanciful arrangements of peacocks’ feath- 
ers. Fresh -blown ling and the beautiful 
spikes of the bell-heather formed the 
staple of the decorations, and Mairi had 
brought enough to adorn an assembly-^ 
room. 

“ That is like the Lewis people,” Sheila 
said with a laugh : she had not been in 
as happy a mood for many a day. “ I 
asked you to bring one peat, and of 
course you brought two. Tell the truth, 
Mairi: could you have forced yourself 
to bring one peat ?” 

“ I wass thinking it was safer to bring 
sa two,” replied Mairi, blushing all over 
the fair and pretty face. 

And indeed, there being two peats, 
Sheila thought she might as well try an 
experiment with one. She crumbled 
down some pieces, put them on a plate, 
lit them, and placed the plate outside the 
open window, on the sill. Presently a 
new, sweet, half-forgotten fragrance came 
floating in, and Sheila almost forgot the 
success of the experiment in the half- 
delighted, half-sad reminiscences called 
up by the scent of the peat. Mairi failed 
to see how any one could willfully smoke 
a house — any one, that is to say, who did 
not save the smoke for his thatch. And 
who was so particular as Sheila had been 
about having the clothes come in from 
the washing dried so that they should not 
retain this very odor that seemed now to 
delight her ? 

At last the room was finished, and 
Sheila contemplated it with much satis- 
faction. The table was laid, and on the 
white cloth stood the bottles most familiar 
to Borva. The peat-smoke still lingered 
in the air : she could not have wished 
anything to be better. 

Then she went off to look after the 
luncheon, and Mairi was permitted to go 
down and explore the mysteries of the 
kitchen. The servants were not accus- 
tomed to this interference and oversight, 
and might have resented it, only that 


A PRINCESS 


OF THULE. 


Slieila had proved a very good mistress 
to them, and had shown, too, that she 
would have her own way when she 
wanted it. Suddenly, as Sheila was ex- 
plaining to Mairi the use of some par- 
ticular piece of mechanism, she heard a 
sound that made her heart jump. It 
was now but half-past one, and yet that 
was surely her husband’s foot in the hall. 
For a moment she was too bewildered to 
know what to do. She heard him go 
straight into the very room she had been 
decorating, the door of which she had 
left open. Then, as she went up stairs, 
with her heart still beating fast, the first 
thing that met her eye was a tartan shawl 
belonging to Mairi that had been acci- 
dentally left in the passage. Her hus- 
band must have seen it. 

“Sheila, what nonsense is this?” he 
said. 

He was evidently in a hurry, and yet 
she could not answer : her heart was 
throbbing too quickly. 

“Look here,” he said: “I wish you’d 
give up this grotto-making till to-morrow. 
Mrs. Kavanagh, Mrs. Lorraine and Lord 
Arthur Redmond are coming here to 
luncheon at two. I suppose you can 
get something decent for them. What is 
the matter ? What is the meaning of all 
this ?” 

And then his eyes rested on the tartan 
shawl, which he had really not noticed 
before. 

“Who is in the house?” he said. 
“Have you asked some washerwoman 
to lunch ?” 

Sheila managed at last to say, “ It is 
Mairi come from Stornoway. I was 
thinking you would be surprised to see 
her when you came in.” 

“And these preparations are for her ?” 

Sheila said nothing : there was that in 
the tone of her husband’s voice which 
was gradually bringing her to herself, 
and giving her quite sufficient firmness. 

“And now that this girl has come up, 
I suppose you mean to introduce her to 
all your friends; and I suppose you 
expect those people who are coming in 
half an hour to sit down at table with a 
kitchen-maid ?” 

“Mairi,” said Sheila, standing quite 


179 

erect, but with her eyes cast down, “is 
my cousin.” 

“Your cousin! Don’t be ridiculous, 
Sheila. You know very well that Mairi 
is nothing more or less than a scullery- 
maid ; and I suppose you mean to take 
her out of the kitchen and introduce her 
to people, and expect her to sit down 
at table with them. Is not that so?” 
She did not answer, and he went on im- 
patiently : “ Why was I not told that this 
girl was coming to stay at my house ? 
Surely I have some right to know what 
guests you invite, that I may be able at 
least to ask my friends not to come near 
the house while they are in it.” 

“ That I did not tell you before — yes, 
that was a pity,” said Sheila, sadly and 
calmly. “But it will be no trouble to 
you. When Mrs. Lorraine comes up at 
two o’clock there will be luncheon for 
her and for her friends. She will not 
have to sit down with any of my rela- 
tions or with me, for if they are not fit to 
meet her, I am not ; and it is not any 
great matter that I do not meet her at 
two o’clock.” 

There was no passion of any sort in 
the measured and sad voice, nor in the 
somewhat pale face and downcast eyes. 
Perhaps it was this composure that de- 
ceived Frank Lavender : at all events, 
he turned and walked out of the house, 
satisfied that he would not have to intro- 
duce this Highland cousin to his friends, 
and just as certain that Sheila would re- 
pent of her resolve and appear in the 
dining-room as usual. 

Sheila went down stairs to the kitchen, 
where Mairi still stood awaiting her. She 
gave orders to one of the servants about 
having luncheon laid in the dining-room 
at two, and then she bade Mairi follow 
her up stairs. 

“Mairi,” she said, when they were 
alone, “ I want you to put your things in 
your trunk at once — in five minutes if 
you can : I shall be waiting for you.” 

“Miss Sheila!” cried the girl, looking 
up to her friend’s face with a sudden 
fright seizing her heart, “what is the 
matter with you ? You are going to die !” 

“There is nothing the matter, MairL 
I am going away.” 


i8o 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


She uttered the words placidly, but 
there was a pained look about the lips 
that could not be concealed, and her face, 
unknown to herself, had the whiteness 
of despair in it. 

“Going away!” said Mairi, in a be- 
wildered way. “ Where are you going, 
Miss Sheila ?” 

“ I will tell you by and by. Get your 
trunk ready, Mairi. You are keeping 
me waiting.” 

Then she called for a servant, who 
was sent for a cab ; and by the time the 
vehicle appeared Mairi was ready to get 
into it, and her trunk was put on the 
top. Then, clad in the rough blue dress 
that she used to wear in Borva, and 
with no appearance of haste or fear in 
the calm and death-like face, Sheila 
came out from her husband’s house and 
found herself alone in the world. There 
were two little girls, the daughters of a 
neighbor, passing by at the time : she 
patted them on the head and bade them 
good-morning. Could she recollect, five 
minutes thereafter, having seen them ? 
There was a strange and distant look in 
her eyes. 

She got into the cab and sat down by 
Mairi, and then took the girl’s hand. 
"I am sorry to take you away, Mairi,” 


she said; but she was apparently not 
thinking of Mairi, nor of the house she 
was leaving, nor yet of the vehicle in 
which she was so strangely placed. Was 
she thinking of a certain wild and wet 
day in the far Hebrides, when a young 
bride stood on the decks of a great ves- 
sel and saw the home of her childhood 
and the friends of her youth fade back 
into the desolate waste of the sea ? Per- 
haps there may have been some uncon- 
scious influence in this picture to direct 
her movements at this moment, for of 
definite resolves she had none. When 
Mairi told her that the cabman wanted 
to know whither he was to drive, she 
merely answered, “Oh yes, Mairi, we will 
go to the station ;” and Mairi added, 
addressing the man, “It was the Euston 
Station.” Then they drove away. 

“Are you going home ?” said the young 
girl, looking up with a strange forebod- 
ing and sinking of the heart to the pale 
face and distant eyes — “Are you going 
home, Miss Sheila?” 

“Oh yes, we are going home, Mairi,” 
was the answer she got, but the tone in 
which it was uttered filled her mind with 
doubt, and something like despair. 



PART IX. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

A NEW PAY BREAKS. 

W AS this, then, the end of the fair 
and beautiful romance that had 
sprung up and blossomed so hopefully 
in the remote and bleak island, amid 
the silence of the hills and moors and 
the wild twilights of the North, and set 
round about, as it were, by the cold 
sea-winds and the sound of the Atlantic 
waves ? Who could have fancied, look- 
ing at those two young folks as they 
wandered about the shores of the island, 
as they sailed on the still moonlight 
nights through the channels of Loch 
Roag, or as they sang together of an 
evening in the little parlor of the house 
at Borvabost, that all the delight and 
wonder of life then apparently opening 
out before them was so soon and so sud- 
denly to collapse, leaving them in outer 
darkness and despair ? All their dif- 
ficulties had been got over. From one 
side and from another they had received 
generous help, friendly advice, self-sac- 
rifice to start them on a path that seemed 
to be strewn with sweet-smelling flowers. 
And here was the end — a wretched girl, 
blinded and bewildered, flying from her 
husband’s house and seeking refuge in 
the great world of London, careless 
whither she went. 

Whose was the fault ? Which of them 
had been mistaken up there in the North, 
laying the way open for a bitter disap- 
pointment ? Or had either of them fail- 
ed to carry out that unwritten contract 
entered into in the halcyon period of 
courtship, by which two young people 
promise to be and remain to each other 
all that they then appeared ? 

Lavender, at least, had no right to 
complain. If the real Sheila turned out 
to be something different from the Sheila 
of his fancy, he had been abundantly 
warned that such would be the case. 
He had even accepted it as probable, 
and said that as the Sheila whom he 


might come to know must doubtless be 
better than the Sheila whom he had im- 
agined, there was little danger in store 
for either. He would love the true 
Sheila even better than the creature of 
his brain. Had he done so ? He found 
beside him this proud and sensitive 
Highland girl, full of generous impulses 
that craved for the practical work of 
helping other people, longing, with the 
desire of a caged bird, for the free winds 
and light of heaven, the sight of hills 
and the sound of seas, and he could not 
understand why she should not conform 
to the usages of city life, He was dis- 
appointed that she did not do so. The 
imaginative Sheila, who was to appear 
as a wonderful sea-princess in London 
drawing-rooms, had disappeared now ; 
and the real Sheila, who did not care to 
go with him into that society which he 
loved or affected to love, he had not 
learned to know. 

And had she been mistaken in her 
estimate of Frank Lavender’s character ? 
At the very moment of her leaving her 
husband’s house, if she had been asked 
the question, she would have turned and 
proudly answered, “ No !” She had been 
disappointed — so grievously disappoint- 
ed that her heart seemed to be breaking 
over it — but the manner in which Frank 
Lavender had fallen away from all the 
promise he had given was due not to 
himself, but to the influence of the so- 
ciety around him. Of that she was 
quite assured. He had shown himself 
careless, indifferent, inconsiderate to the 
verge of cruelty ; but he was not, she had 
convinced herself, consciously cruel, nor 
yet selfish, nor radically bad-hearted in 
any way. In her opinion, at least, he 
was courageously sincere, to the verge of 
shocking people who mistook his frank- 
ness for impudence. He was recklessly 
generous : he would have given the coat 
off his back to a beggar at the instiga- 
tion of a sudden impulse, provided he 


182 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


could have got into a cab before any 
of his friends saw him. He had rare 
abilities, and at times wildly ambitious 
dreams, not of his own glorification, but 
of what he would do to celebrate the 
beauty and the graces of the princess 
whom he fancied he had married. It 
may seem hard of belief that this man, 
judging him by his actions at this time, 
could have had anything of thorough 
self-forgetfulness and manliness in his 
nature. But when things were at their 
very worst, when he appeared to the 
world as a self-indulgent idler, careless 
of a noble woman’s unbounded love ; 
when his indifference, or worse, had 
actually driven from his house a young 
wife who had especial claims on his for- 
bearance and consideration, — there were 
two people who still believed in Frank 
Lavender. They were Sheila Macken- 
zie and Edward Ingram ; and a man’s 
wife and his oldest friend generally know 
something about his real nature, its 
besetting temptations, its weakness, its 
strength and its possibilities. 

Of course, Ingram was speedily made 
aware of all that had happened. Laven- 
der went home at the appointed hour to 
luncheon, accompanied by his three ac- 
quaintances. He had met them acci- 
dentally in the forenoon, and as Mrs. 
Lorraine was most particular in her in- 
quiries about Sheila, he thought he could 
not do better than ask her there and 
then, with her mother and Lord Arthur, 
to have luncheon at two. What follow- 
ed on his carrying the announcement to 
Sheila we know. He left the house, 
taking it for granted that there would 
be no trouble when he returned. Per- 
haps he reproached himself for having 
spoken so sharply, but Sheila was really 
very thoughtless in such matters. At 
two o’clock everything would be right. 
Sheila must see how it would be im- 
possible to introduce a young Highland 
serving-maid to two fastidious ladies and 
the son of a great Conservative peer. 

Lavender met his three friends once 
more, and walked up to the house with 
them, letting them in, indeed, with his 
own latch-key. Passing the dining- 
room, he saw that the table was laid 


there. This was well. Sheila had been 
reasonable. 

They went up stairs to the drawing- 
room. Sheila was not there. Lavender 
rang the bell, and bade the servant tell 
her mistress she was wanted. 

‘‘Mrs. Lavender has gone out, sir,” 
said the servant. 

‘‘Oh, indeed!” he said, taking the 
matter quite coolly. “When ?” 

“A quarter of an hour ago, sir. She 
went out with the — the young lady who 
came this morning.” 

“Very well. Let me know when lunch- 
eon is ready.” 

Lavender turned to his guests, feeling 
a little awkward, but appearing to treat 
the matter in a light and humorous way. 
He imagined that Sheila, resenting what 
he had said, had resolved to take Mairi 
away and find her lodgings elsewhere. 
Perhaps that might be done in time to 
let Sheila come back to receive his 
guests. 

Sheila did not appear, however, and 
luncheon was announced. 

“ I suppose we may as well go down,” 
said Lavender with a shrug of his shoul- 
ders. “ It is impossible to say when she 
may come back. She is such a good- 
hearted creature that she would never 
think of herself or her own affairs in 
looking after this girl from Lewis.” 

They went down stairs and took their 
places at the table. 

“For my part,” said Mrs. Lorraine, 
“ I think it is very unkind not to wait for 
poor Mrs. Lavender. She may come in 
dreadfully tired and hungry.” 

“ But that would not vex her so much 
as the notion that you had waited on her 
account,” said Sheila’s husband with a 
smile ; and Mrs. Lorraine was pleased to 
hear him sometimes speak in a kindly 
way of the Highland girl whom he had 
married. 

Lavender’s guests were going some- 
where after luncheon, and he had half 
promised to go with them, Mrs. Lorraine 
stipulating that Sheila should be induced 
to come also. But when luncheon was 
over and Sheila had not appeared, he 
changed his intention. He would re- 
main at home. He saw his three friends 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


183 


depart, and went into the study and lit a 
cigar. 

How odd the place seemed ! Sheila 
had left no instructions about the re- 
moval of those barbaric decorations she 
had placed in the chamber ; and here, 
around him, seemed to be the walls of 
the old-fashioned little room at Borva- 
bost, with its big shells, its peacocks’ 
feathers, its skins and stuffed fish, and 
masses of crimson bell-heather. Was 
there not, too, an odor of peat-smoke in 
the air ? — and then his eye caught sight 
of the plate that still stood on the win- 
dow-sill, with the ashes of the burned 
peat on it. 

“The odd child she is!” he thought 
with a smile, “to go playing at grotto- 
making, and trying to fancy she was up 
in Lewis again ! I suppose she would 
like to let her hair down again, and take 
off her shoes and stockings, and go 
wading along the sand in search of shell- 
fish.” 

And then, somehow, his fancies went 
back to the old time when he had first 
seen and admired her wild ways, her 
fearless occupations by sea and shore, 
and the delight of active work that shone 
on her bright face and in her beautiful 
eyes. How lithe and handsome her fig- 
ure used to be in that blue dress, when 
she stood in the middle of the boat, her 
head bent back, her arms upstretched 
and pulling at some rope or other, and 
all the fine color of exertion in the bloom 
of her cheeks ! Then the pride with 
which she saw her little vessel cutting 
through the water ! — how she tightened 
her lips with a joyous determination as 
the sheets were hauled close, and the 
gunwale of the small boat heeled over 
so that it almost touched the hissing and 
gurgling foam ! — how she laughed at 
Duncan’s anxiety as she rounded some 
rocky point, and sent the boat spinning 
into the clear and smooth waters of the 
bay ! Perhaps, after all, it was too bad 
to keep the poor child so long shut up 
in a city. She was evidently longing 
for a breath of sea-air, and for some 
brief dash of that brisk, fearless life on 
the sea-coast that she used to love. It 
was a happy life, after all ; and he had 


himself enjoyed it when his hands and 
face got browned by the sun, when he 
grew to wonder how any human being 
could wear black garments and drink 
foreign wines and smoke cigars at eigh- 
teenpence apiece, so long as frieze coats, 
whisky and a brier-root pipe were pro- 
curable. How one slept up in that re- 
mote island, after all the laughing and 
drinking and singing of the evening 
were over ! How sharp was the moni- 
tion of hunger when the keen sea-air 
blew about your face on issuing out in 
the morning! and how fresh and cool 
and sweet was that early breeze, with 
the scent of Sheila’s flowers in it ! Then 
the long, bright day at the river-side, 
with the black pools rippling in the wind, 
and in the silence the rapid whistle of 
the silken line through the air, with now 
and again the “blob” of a big salmon 
rising t<5 a fly farther down the pool ! 
Where was there any rest like the rest 
of the mid-day luncheon, when Duncan 
had put the big fish, wrapped in rushes, 
under the shadow of the nearest rock, 
when you sat down on the warm heather 
and lit your pipe, and began to inquire 
where you had been bitten on hands 
and neck by the ferocious “ clegs ” while 
you were too busy in playing a fifteen- 
pounder to care ? Then, perhaps, as you 
were sitting there in the warm sunlight, 
with all the fresh scents of the moorland 
around, you would hear a light footstep 
on the soft moss ; and, turning round, 
here was Sheila herself, with a bright 
look in her pretty eyes, and a half blush 
on her cheek, and a friendly inquiry as 
to the way the fish had been behaving. 
Then the beautiful, strange, cool even- 
ings on the shores of Loch Roag, with 
the wild, clear light still shining in the 
northern heavens, and the sound of the 
waves getting to be lonely and distant ; 
or, still later, out in Sheila’s boat, with 
the great yellow moon rising up over 
Suainabhal and Mealasabhal into a 
lambent vault of violet sky ; a pathway 
of quivering gold lying across the loch ; 
a mild radiance glittering here and there 
on the spars of the small vessel, and 
out there the great Atlantic lying still 
and distant as in a dream. As he sat 


4 PRINCESS OF THULE . 


184 

in this little room and thought of all 
these things, he grew to think he had 
not acted quite fairly to Sheila. She 
was so fond of that beautiful island-life, 
and she had not even visited the Lewis 
since her marriage. She should go now. 
He would abandon the trip to the Tyrol, 
and as soon as arrangements could be 
made they would together start for the 
North, and some day find themselves 
going up the steep shore to Sheila’s 
home, with the old King of Borva stand- 
ing in the porch of the house, and en- 
deavoring to conceal his nervousness by 
swearing at Duncan’s method of carry- 
ing the luggage. 

Had not Sheila’s stratagem succeeded ? 
That pretty trick of hers in decorating 
the room so as to resemble the house at 
Borvabost had done all that she could 
have desired. But where was she ? 

Lavender rose hastily and looked at 
his watch. Then he rang the bell, and 
a servant appeared. “Did not Mrs. 
Lavender say when she would return ?” 
he asked. 

“ No, sir.” 

“You don’t know where she went ?” 

“ No, sir. The young lady’s luggage 
was put into the cab, and they drove 
away without leaving any message.” 

He scarcely dared confess to himself 
what fears began to assail him. He 
went up stairs to Sheila’s room, and 
there everything appeared to be in its 
usual place, even to the smallest articles 
on the dressing-table. They were all 
there, except one. That was a locket, 
too large an4 clumsy to be worn, which 
some one had given her years before she 
left Lewis, and in which her father’s por- 
trait had been somewhat rudely set. 
Just after their marriage Lavender had 
taken out this portrait, touched it up a 
bit into something of a better likeness, 
and put it back ; and then she had per- 
suaded him to have a photograph of 
himself colored and placed on the op- 
posite side. This locket, open and 
showing both portraits, she had fixed on 
to a small stand, and in ordinary cir- 
cumstances it always stood on one side 
of her dressing-table. The stand was 
there, the locket was gone. 


He went down stairs again. The after- 
noon was drawing on. A servant came 
to ask him at what hour he wished to 
dine : he bade her wait till her mistress 
came home and consult her. Then he 
went out. 

It was a beautiful, quiet afternoon, 
with a warm light from the west shining 
over the now yellowing trees of the 
squares and gardens. He walked down 
toward Notting Hill Gate Station, en- 
deavoring to convince himself that he 
was not perturbed, and yet looking 
somewhat anxiously at the cabs that 
passed. People were now coming out 
from their business in the city by train 
and omnibus and hansom ; and they 
seemed to be hurrying home in very good 
spirits, as if they were sure of the wel- 
come awaiting them there. Now and 
again you would see a meeting — some 
demure young person, who had been 
furtively watching the railway-station, 
suddenly showing a brightness in her 
face as she went forward to shake hands 
with some new arrival, and then trip- 
ping briskly away with him, her hand 
on his arm. There were men carrying 
home fish in small bags, or baskets of 
fruit — presents to their wives, doubtless, 
from town. Occasionally an open car- 
riage would go by, containing one grave 
and elderly gentleman and a group of 
small girls — probably his daughters, who 
had gone into the city to accompany 
their papa homeward. Why did these 
scenes and incidents, cheerful in them- 
selves, seem to him to be somehow sad- 
dening as he walked vaguely on ? He 
knew, at least, that there was little use 
in returning home. There was no one 
in that silent house in the square. The 
rooms would be dark in the twilight. 
Probably dinner would be laid, with no 
one to sit down at the table. He wished 
Sheila had left word where she was going. 

Then he bethought him of the way in 
which they had parted, and of the sense 
of fear that had struck him the moment 
he left the house, that after all he had 
been too harsh with the child. Now, at 
least, he was ready to apologize to her. 
If only he could see Sheila coming 
along in one of those hansoms — if he 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


185 


could see, at any distance, the figure he 
knew so well walking toward him on 
! the pavement — would he not instantly 
; confess to her that he had been wrong, 

; even grievously wrong, and beg her to 
forgive him? She should have it all 
her own way about going up to Lewis. 
He would cast aside this society-life he 
had been living, and to please her would 
I go in for any sort of work or amusement 
I of which she approved. He was so 
! anxious, indeed, to put these virtuous 
resolutions into force that he suddenly 
turned and walked rapidly back to the 
house, with the wild hope that Sheila 
i might have already come back. 

The windows were dark, the curtains 
were yet drawn, and by this time the 
evening had come on and the lamps in 
the square had been lit. He let himself 
into the house by his latch-key. He 
walked into all the rooms and up into 
Sheila’s room : everything remained as 
he had left it. The white cloth glim- 
mered in the dusk of the dining-room, 
and the light of the lamp outside in the 
street touched here and there the angles 
of the crystal and showed the pale colors 
of the glasses. The clock on the man- 
! telpiece ticked in the silence. If Sheila 
1 had been lying dead in that small room 
up stairs, the house could not have ap- 
peared more silent and solemn. 

He could not bear this horrible soli- 
tude. He called one of the servants 
and left a message for Sheila, if she 
i came in in the internal, that he would 
be back at ten o’clock: then he went 
’ out, got into a hansom and drove down 
to his club in St. James’s street. 

Most of the men were dining: the 
other rooms were almost deserted. He 
did not care to dine just then. He went 
into the library : it was occupied by an 
old gentleman who was fast asleep in 
an easy-chair. He went into the billiard- 
rooms, in the vague hope that some ex- 
citing game might be going on : there 
i was not a soul in the place, the gases 
were down, and an odor of stale smoke 
pervaded the dismal chambers. Should 
he go to the theatre ? His sitting there 
would be a mockery while this vague 
and terrible fear was present to his heart. [ 


Or go down to see Ingram, as had been 
his wont in previous hours of trouble ? 
He dared not go near Ingram without 
some more definite news about Sheila. 
In the end he went out into the open 
air, as if he were in danger of being 
stifled, and, walking indeterminately on, 
found himself once more at his own 
house. 

The place was still quite dark : he 
knew before entering that Sheila had 
not returned, and he did not seem to be 
surprised. It was now long after their 
ordinary dinner-hour. When he went 
into the house he bade the servants light 
the gas and bring up dinner : he would 
himself sit down at this solitary table, 
if only for the purpose of finding occu- 
pation and passing this terrible time of 
suspense. 

It never occurred to him, as it might 
have occurred to him at one time, that 
Sheila had made some blunder some- 
where and been unavoidably detained. 
He did not think of any possible repe- 
tition of her adventures in Richmond 
Park. He was too conscious of the prob- 
able reason of Sheila’s remaining away 
from her own home ; and yet from min- 
ute to minute he fought with that con- 
sciousness, and sought to prove to him- 
self that, after all, she would soon be 
heard driving up to the door. He ate 
his dinner in silence, and then drew a 
chair up to the fire and lit a cigar. 

For the first time in his life he was 
driven to go over the. events that had 
occurred since his marriage, and to ask 
himself how it had all come about that 
Sheila and he were not as they once had 
been. He recalled the early days of 
their friendship at Borva ; the beautiful 
period of their courtship ; the appear- 
ance of the young wife in London, and 
the close relegation of Sheila to the do- 
mestic affairs of the house, while he had 
chosen for himself other companions, 
other interests, other aims. There was 
no attempt at self-justification in those 
communings, but an effort, sincere 
enough in its way, to understand how 
all this had happened. He sat and 
dreamed there before the warmth of the 
fire, with the slow and monotonous tick- 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


1 86 

ing of the clock unconsciously acting 
on his brain. In time the silence, the 
warmth, the monotonous sound pro- 
duced their natural effects, and he fell 
fast asleep. 

He awoke with a start. The small 
silver-toned bell on the mantelpiece had 
struck the hour of twelve. He looked 
around, and knew that the evil had 
come upon him, for Sheila had not re- 
turned, and all his most dreadful fears 
of that evening were confirmed. Sheila 
had gone away and left him. Whither 
had she gone ? 

Now there was no more indecision in 
his actions. He got his hat, plunged 
into the cold night air, and, finding a 
hansom, bade the man drive as hard as 
he could go down to Sloane street. There 
was a light in Ingram’s windows, which 
were on the ground floor : he tapped with 
his stick on one of the panes — an old 
signal that had been in constant use 
when he and Ingram were close com- 
panions and friends. Ingram came to 
the door and opened it : the light of a 
lamp glared in on his face. “Hillo, 
Lavender !” he said in a tone of surprise. 

The other could not speak, but he 
went into the house, and Ingram, shut- 
ting the door and following him, found 
that the man’s face was deadly pale. 

“Sheila — ” he said, and stopped. 

“ Well, what about her ?” said Ingram, 
keeping quite calm, but with wild fancies 
about some terrible accident almost stop- 
ping the pulsation of his heart. 

"Sheila has gone away.” 

Ingram did not seem to understand. 

“Sheila has gone away, Ingram,” said 
Lavender in an excited way. “You 
don’t know anything about it? You 
don’t know where she has gone ? What 
am I to do, Ingram ? how am I to find 
her ? Good God ! don’t you understand 
what I tell you ? And now it is past 
midnight, and my poor girl may be wan- 
dering about the streets !” 

He was walking up and down the 
room, paying almost no attention, in his 
excitement, to the small, sallow-faced 
man who stood quite quiet, a trifle afraid, 
perhaps, but with his heart full of a blaze 
of anger. 


" She has gone away from your house ?” 
he said slowly. “What made her do 
that ?” 

“I did,” said Lavender in a hurried 
way. “ I have acted like a brute to her 
— that is true enough. You needn’t say 
anything to me, Ingram : I feel myself 
far more guilty than anything you could 
say. You may heap reproaches on me 
afterward, but tell me, Ingram, what am 
I to do ? You know what a proud spirit 
she has : who can tell what she might 
do ? She wouldn’t go home — she would 
be too proud : she may have gone and 
drowned herself.” 

“ If you don’t control yourself and tell 
me what has happened, how am I to 
help you ?” said Ingram stiffly, and yet 
disposed somehow — perhaps for the sake 
of Sheila, perhaps because he saw that 
the young man’s self- embarrassment and 
distress were genuine enough — not to be 
too rough with him. 

“Well, you know, Mairi — ” said Lav- 
ender, still walking up and down the 
room in an excited way. “Sheila had 
got the girl up here without telling me, 
some friends of mine were coming home 
to luncheon, we had some disagreement 
about Mairi being present, and then 
Sheila said something about not remain- 
ihg in the house if Mairi did not : some- 
thing of that sort. I don’t know what 
it was, but I know it was all my fault, 
and if she has been driven from the 
house, I did it : that is true enough. 
And where do you think she has gone, 
Ingram ? If I could only see her for 
three minutes I would explain every- 
thing : I would tell her how sorry I am 
for everything that has happened, and 
she would see, when she went back, how 
everything would be right again. I had 
no idea she would go away. It was mere 
peevishness that made me object to 
Mairi meeting those people ; and I had 
no idea that Sheila would take it so 
much to heart. Now tell me what you 
think should be done, Ingram. All I 
want is to see her just for three minutes 
to tell her it was all a mistake, and that 
she will never have to fear anything 
like that again.” 

Ingram heard him out, and said with 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


187 


some precision, “Do you mean to say 
that you fancy all this trouble is to be 
got over that way ? Do you know so 
little of Sheila, after the time you have 
been married to her, as to imagine that 
she has taken this step out of some mo- 
mentary caprice, and that a few words 
of apology and promise will cause her to 
rescind it? You must be crazed, Lav- 
ender, or else you are actually as igno- 
rant of the nature of that girl as you 
were up in the Highlands.” 

The young man seemed to calm down 
his excitement and impatience, but it 
was because of a new fear that had 
struck him, and that was visible in his 
face. “Do you think she will never 
come back, Ingram?” he said, looking 
aghast. 

“ I don’t know : she may not. At all 
events, you may be quite sure that, once 
having resolved to leave your house, she 
is not to be pacified and cajoled by a 
few phrases and a promise of repent- 
ance on your part. That is quite sure. 
And what is quite as sure is this, that if 
you knew just now where she was, the 
most foolish thing you could do would 
be to go and see her.” 

“ But I must go and see her — I must 
find her out, Ingram,” he said passion- 
ately. “ I don’t care what becomes of 
me. If she won’t go back home, so 
much the worse for me ; but I ?nust find 
her out, and know that she is safe. 
Think of it, Ingram ! Perhaps she is 
walking about the streets somewhere at 
this moment ; and you know her proud 
spirit. If she were to go near the 
river — ” 

“She won’t go near the river,” said 
Ingram quietly, “ and she won’t be walk- 
ing about the streets. She is either in 
the Scotch mail-train, going up to Glas- 
gow, or else she has got some lodgings 
somewhere, along with Mairi. Has she 
any money ?” 

“No,” said Lavender. And then he 
thought for a minute. “ There was some 
money her father gave her in case she 
might want it at a pinch : she may have 
that — I hope she has that. I was to 
have given her money to-morrow morn- 
ing. But hadn’t I better go to the po- 


lice-stations, and see, just by way of 
precaution, that she has not been heard 
of? I may as well do that as nothing. 
I could not go home to that empty 
house — I could not sleep.” 

“ Sheila is a sensible girl : she is safe 
enough,” said Ingram. “And if you 
don’t care about going home, you may 
as well remain here. I can give you a 
room up stairs when you want it. In 
the mean time, if you will pull a chair 
to the table and calm yourself, and take 
it for granted that you will soon be as- 
sured of Sheila’s safety, I will tell you 
what I think you should do. Here is a 
cigar to keep you occupied : there are 
whisky and cold water back there if you 
like. You will do no good by punishing 
yourself in small matters, for your trou- 
ble is likely to be serious enough, I can 
tell you, before you get Sheila back, if 
ever you get her back. Take the chair 
with the cushion.” 

It was so like the old days when these 
two used to be companions ! Many 
and many a time had the younger man 
come down to these lodgings, with all 
his troubles and wild impulses and 
pangs of contrition ready to be revealed ; 
and then Ingram, concealing the liking 
he had for the lad’s generous wayward- 
ness, his brilliant and facile cleverness 
and his dashes of honest self-deprecia- 
tion, would gravely lecture him and put 
him right and send him off comforted. 
Frank Lavender had changed much 
since then. The handsome boy had 
grown into a man of the world ; there 
was less self-revelation in his manner, 
and he was less sensitive to the opinions 
and criticisms of his old friend; but 
Ingram, who was not prone to idealism 
of any sort, had never ceased to believe 
that this change was but superficial, and 
that, in different circumstances and with 
different aims, Lavender might still ful- 
fill the best promise of his youth. 

“You have been a good friend to me, 
Ingram,” he said with a hot blush, “and 
I have treated you as badly as I have 
treated — By Jove ! what a chance I 
had at one time !” 

He was looking back on all the fair 
pictures his imagination had drawn while 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


1 88 

yet Sheila and he were wandering about 
that island in the northern seas. 

“You had,” said Ingram decisively. 
“At one time I thought you the most 
fortunate man in the world. There was 
nothing left for you to desire, so far as I 
could see. You were young and strong, 
with plenty of good spirits and sufficient 
ability to earn yourself an honorable liv- 
ing, and you had won the love of the 
most beautiful and best-hearted woman 
I have known. You never seemed to 
me to know what that meant. Men 
marry women — there is no difficulty 
about that — and you can generally get 
an amiable sort of person to become 
your wife and have a sort of affection 
for you, and so on. But how many 
have bestowed on them the pure and 
exalted passion of a young and innocent 
girl, who is ready to worship with all the 
fervor of a warmly imaginative and 
emotional nature the man she has cho- 
sen to love ? And suppose he is young 
too, and capable of understanding all 
the tender sentiments of a high-spirited, 
sensitive and loyal woman, and suppose 
that he fancies himself as much in love 
with her as she with him ? These con- 
ditions are not often fulfilled, I can tell 
you. It is a happy fluke when they are. 
Many a day ago I told you that you 
should consider yourself more fortunate 
than if you had been made an emperor ; 
and indeed it seemed to me that you had 
everything in the shape of worldly hap- 
piness easily within your reach. How 
you came to kick away the ball from 
your feet — Well, God only knows. 
The thing is inconceivable to me. You 
are sitting here as you used to sit two or 
three years ago, and in the interval you 
have had every chance in life ; and now 
if you are not the most wretched man 
in London, you ought at least to be the 
most ashamed and repentant.” 

Lavender’s head was buried in his 
hands : he did not speak. 

“And it is not only your own happi- 
ness you have destroyed. When you 
saw that girl first she was as lighthearted 
and contented with her lot as any hu- 
man being could be. From one week’s 
end to the other not the slightest care 


disturbed her mind. And then, when 
she entrusted her whole life to you — 
when she staked her faith in human 
nature on you, and gave you all the 
treasures of hope and reverence and 
love that lay in her pure and innocent 
soul — my God ! what have you done 
with these ? It is not that you have 
shamed and insulted her as a wife, and 
driven her out of her home — there are 
other homes than yours where she would 
be welcome a thousand times over — but 
you have destroyed her belief in every- 
thing she had taught herself to trust, 
you have outraged the tenderest senti- 
ments of her heart, you have killed her 
faith as well as ruined her life. I talk 
plainly : I cannot do otherwise. If I 
help you now, don’t imagine I condone 
what you have done : I would cut my 
right hand off first. For Sheila’s sake 
I will try to help you.” 

He stopped just then, however, and 
checked the indignation that had got 
the better of his ordinarily restrained 
manner and curt speech. The man be- 
fore him was crying bitterly, his face 
hidden in his hands. 

“ Look here, Lavender,” he said pres- 
ently : “ I don’t want to be hard on you. 
I tell you plainly what I think of your 
conduct, so that no delusions may exist 
between us. And I will say this for you, 
that the only excuse you have — ” 

“There is no excuse,” said the other, 
sadly enough. “ I have no excuse, and 
I know it.” 

“The only thing, then, you can say 
in mitigation of what you have done is 
that you never seem to have understood 
the girl whom you married. You start- 
ed with giving her a fancy character 
when first you went to the Lewis, and 
once you had got the bit in your teeth 
there was no stopping you. If you seek 
now to get Sheila back to you, the best 
thing you can do, I presume, would be 
to try to see her as she is, to win her 
regard that way, to abandon that ope- 
ratic business, and learn to know her as 
a thoroughly good woman, who has her 
own ways and notions about things, and 
who has a very definite character under- 
lying that extreme gentleness which she 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


189 


fancies to be one of her duties. The 
child did her dead best to accommodate 
herself to your idea of her, and failed. 
When she would rather have been living 
a brisk and active life in the country or 
by the seaside, running wild about a 
hillside, or reading strange stories in the 
evening, or nursing some fisherman’s 
child that had got ill, you had her drag- 
ged into a sort of society with which she 
had no sympathy whatever. And the 
odd thing to me is that you yourself 
seemed to be making an effort that way. 
You did not always devote yourself to 
fashionable life. Where are all the old 
ambitions you used to talk about in the 
very chair you are now sitting in ?” 

“Is there any hope of my getting 
Sheila back ?” he said, looking up at 
last. There was a vague and bewilder- 
ed look in his eyes. He seemed inca- 
pable of thinking of anything but that. 

“I don’t know,” said Ingram. “But 
one thing is certain : you will never get 
her back to repeat the experiment that 
has just ended in this desperate way.” 

“ I should not ask that,” he said hur- 
riedly — “I should not ask that at all. 
If I could but see her for a moment, I 
would ask her to tell me everything she 
wanted, everything she demanded as 
conditions, and I would obey her. I will 
promise to do everything that she wishes.” 

“If you saw her you could give her 
nothing but promises,” said Ingram. 
“ Now, what if you were to try to do what 
you know she wishes, and then go to her ?” 

“You mean — ” said Lavender, glan- 
cing up with another startled look on his 
face. “ You don’t mean that I am to re- 
main away from her a long time — go into 
banishment as it were — and then some 
day come back to Sheila and beg her to 
forget all that happened long before ?” 

“I mean something very like that,” 
said Ingram with composure. “ I don’t 
know that it would be successful. I 
have no means of ascertaining what 
Sheila would think of such a project — 
whether she would think that she could 
ever live with you again.” 

Lavender seemed fairly stunned by 
the possibility of Sheila’s resolving never 
to see him again ; and began to recall 


what Ingram had many a time said 
about the strength of purpose she could 
show when occasion needed. 

“ If her faith in you is wholly destroy- 
ed, your case is hopeless. A woman 
may cling to her belief in a man through 
good report and evil report, but if she 
once loses it she never recovers it. But 
there is this hope for you : I know very 
well that Sheila had a much more accu- 
rate notion of you than ever you had of 
her ; and I happen to know, also, that 
at the very time when you were most 
deeply distressing her here in London 
she held the firm conviction that your 
conduct toward her — your habits, your 
very self — would alter if you could only 
be persuaded to get out of the life you 
have been leading. That was true, at 
least, up to the time of your leaving 
Brighton. She believed in you then. 
She believed that if you were to cut so- 
ciety altogether, and go and live a useful 
and hardworking life somewhere, you 
would soon become once more the man 
she fell in love with up in Lewis. Per- 
haps she was mistaken : I don’t say 
anything about it myself.” 

The terribly cool way in which Ingram 
talked — separating, defining, exhibiting, 
so that he and his companion should get 
as near as possible to what he believed 
to be the truth of the situation — was odd- 
ly in contrast with the blind and pas- 
sionate yearning of the other for some 
glimpse of hope. His whole nature 
seemed to go out in a cry to Sheila that 
she would come back and give him a 
chance of atoning for the past. At 
length he rose. He looked strangely 
haggard, and his eyes scarcely seemed 
to see the things around him. “I must 
go home," he said. 

Ingram saw that he merely wanted to 
get outside and walk about in order to 
find some relief from this anxiety and 
unrest, and said, “You ought, I think, 
to stop here and go to bed. But if you 
would rather go home, I will walk up 
with you if you like.” 

When the two men went out the night- 
air smelt sweet and moist, for rain had 
fallen, and the city trees were still drip- 
ping with the wet and rustling in the 


190 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


wind. The weather had changed sud- 
denly, and now, in the deep blue over- 
head, they knew the clouds were pass- 
ing swiftly by. Was it the coming light 
of the morning that seemed to give 
depth and richness to that dark-blue 
vault, while the pavements of the streets 
and the houses grew vaguely distinct 
and gray ? Suddenly, in turning the 
corner into Piccadilly, they saw the 
moon appear in a rift of those passing 
clouds, but it was not the moonlight that 
shed this pale and wan grayness down 
the lonely streets. It is just at this mo- 
ment, when the dawn of the new day 
begins to tell, that a great city seems at 
its deadest ; and in the profound silence 
and amid the strange transformations 
of the cold and growing light a man is 
thrown in upon himself, and holds com- 
munion with himself, as though he and 
his own thoughts were all that was left 
in the world. Not a word passed be- 
tween the two men, and Lavender, keen- 
ly sensitive to all such impressions, and 
now and again shivering slightly, either 
from cold or nervous excitement, walked 
blindly along the deserted streets, seeing 
far other things than the tall houses and 
the drooping trees and the growing light 
of the sky. 

It seemed to him at this moment 
that he was looking at Sheila’s funeral. 
There was a great stillness in that small 
house at Borvabost. There was a boat 
— Sheila’s own boat — down at the shore 
there, and there were two or three fig- 
ures in black in it. The day was gray 
and rainy ; the sea washed along the 
melancholy shores ; the far hills were 
hidden in mist. And now he saw some 
people come out of the house into the 
rain, and the bronzed and bearded men 
had oars with them, and on the crossed 
oars there was a coffin placed. They 
went down the hillside. They put the 
coffin in the stern of the boat, and in ab- 
solute silence, except for the wailing of 
the women, they pulled away down the 
dreary Loch Roag till they came to the 
island where the burial-ground is. They 
carried the coffin up to that small en- 
closure, with its rank grass growing 
green and the rain falling on the rude 


stones and memorials. How often had 
he leaned on that low stone wall, and 
read the strange inscriptions in various 
tongues over the graves of mariners from 
distant countries who had met with their 
death on this rocky coast! Had not 
Sheila herself pointed out to him, with a 
sad air, how many of these memorials 
bore the words “who was drowned;” 
and that, too, was the burden of the 
rudely - spelt legends beginning “ Hier 
rutt in Gott,” or “Her under hviler 
stovit,” and sometimes ending with the 
pathetic “Wunderschen ist unsre Hoff- 
nung.” The fishermen brought the cof- 
fin to the newly-made grave, the women 
standing back a bit, old Scarlett Mac- 
Donald stroking Mairi’s hair and bid- 
ding the girl control her frantic grief, 
though the old woman herself could 
hardly speak for her tears and her lam- 
entations. He could read the words 
"Sheila Mackenzie” on the small silver 
plate : she had been taken away from 
all association with him and his name. 
And who was this old man with the 
white hair and the white beard, whose 
hands were tightly clenched, and his 
lips firm, and a look as of death in the 
sunken and wild eyes ? Mackenzie was 
gray a year before — 

“Ingram,” he said suddenly, and his 
voice startled his companion, “do you 
think it is possible to make Sheila happy 
again ?” 

“ How can I tell ?” said Ingram. 

“You used to know everything she 
could wish — everything she was think- 
ing about. If you find her out now, will 
you get to know ? Will you see what I 
can do — not by asking her to come back, 
not by trying to get back my own hap- 
piness, but anything, it does not matter 
what it is, I can do for her ? If she would 
rather not see me again, I will stay away. 
Will you ask her, Ingram ?” 

“We have got to find her first,” said 
his companion. 

“A young girl like that,” said Laven- 
der, taking no heed of the objection, 
“ surely she cannot always be unhappy. 
She is so young and beautiful, and takes 
so much interest in many things : sure- 
ly she may have a happy life.” 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


“She might have had.” 

“I don’t mean with me,” said Laven- 
der, with his haggard face looking still 
more haggard in the increasing light. 
“I mean anything that can be done — 
any way of life that will make her com- 
fortable and contented again — anything 
that I can do for that. Will you try to 
find it out, Ingram ?” 

“Oh yes, I will,” said the other, who 
had been thinking with much foreboding 
of all these possibilities ever since they 
left Sloane street, his only gleam of 
hope being a consciousness that this 
time at least there could be no doubt of 
Frank Lavender’s absolute sincerity, of 
his remorse, and his almost morbid crav- 
ing to make reparation if that were still 
possible. 

They reached the house at last. There 
was a dim orange-colored light shining 
in the passage. Lavender went on and 
threw open the door of the small room 
which Sheila had adorned, asking In- 
gram to follow him. How wild and 
strange this chamber looked, with the 
wan glare of the dawn shining in on its 
barbaric decorations from the sea-coast 
— on the shells and skins and feathers 
that Sheila had placed around ! That 
white light of the morning was now 
shining everywhere into the silent and 
desolate house. Lavender found In- 
gram a bed-room, and then he turned 
away, not knowing what to do. He 
looked into Sheila’s room : there were 
dresses, bits of finery and what not that 
he knew so well, but there was no light 
breathing audible in the silent and emp- 
ty chamber. He shut the door as rev- 
erently as though he were shutting it 
on the dead, and went down stairs and 
threw himself almost fainting with de- 
spair and fatigue on a sofa, while the 
world outside awoke to a new day with 
all its countless and joyous activities 
and duties. 


CHAPTER XX. 

A SURPRISE. 

There was no letter from Sheila in 
the morning ; and Lavender, so soon as 
the post had come and gone, went up to 
13 


191 

Ingram’s room and woke him. “I am 
sorry to disturb you, Ingram,” he said, 
“ but I am going to Lewis. I shall catch 
the train to Glasgow at ten.” 

“And what do you want to get to 
Lewis for?” said Ingram, starting up. 
“ Do you think Sheila would go straight 
back to her own people with all this 
humiliation upon her ? And supposing 
she is not there, how do you propose to 
meet old Mackenzie ?” 

“ I am not afraid of meeting any man,” 
said Lavender : “ I want to know where 
Sheila is. And if I see Mackenzie, I 
can only tell him frankly everything 
that has happened. He is not likely to 
say anything of me half as bad as what 
I think of myself.” 

“Now listen,” said Ingram, sitting up 
in bed, with his brown beard and grayish 
hair in a considerably disheveled con- 
dition : “ Sheila may have gone home, 
but it isn’t likely. If she has not, your 
taking the story up there and spreading 
it abroad would prepare a great deal 
of pain for her when she might go back 
at some future time. But suppose you 
want to make sure that she has not gone 
to her father’s house. She could not 
have got down to Glasgow sooner than 
this morning by last night’s train, you 
know. It is to-morrow morning, not 
this morning, that the Stornoway steam- 
er starts ; and she would be certain to 
go direct to it at the Glasgow Broomie- 
law, and go round the Mull of Cantyre, 
instead of catching it up at Oban, be- 
cause she knows the people in the boat, 
and she and Mairi would be among 
friends. If you really want to know 
whether she has gone north, perhaps 
you could do no better than run down 
to Glasgow to-day, and have a look at 
the boat that starts to-morrow morning. 
I would go with you myself, but I can’t 
escape the office to-day.” 

Lavender agreed to do this, and was 
about to go. But before he bade his 
friend good-bye he lingered for a second 
or two in a hesitating way, and then he 
said, “Ingram, you were speaking the 
other night of your going up to Borva. 
If you should go — ” 

“Of course I sha’n’t go,” said the 


192 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


other promptly. “How could I face 
Mackenzie when he began to ask me 
about Sheila ? No, I cannot go to Borva 
while this affair remains in its present 
condition ; and, indeed, Lavender, I 
mean to stop in London till I see you 
out of your trouble somehow.” 

“You are heaping coals of fire on my 
head.” 

“Oh, don’t look at it that way. If I 
can be of any help to you, I shall expect, 
this time, to have a return for it.” 

“What do you mean ?” 

“ I will tell you when we get to know 
something of Sheila’s intentions.” 

And so Frank Lavender found him- 
self once more, as in the old times, in 
the Euston Station, with the Scotch mail 
ready to start, and all manner of folks 
bustling about with that unnecessary 
activity which betokens the excitement 
of a holiday. What a strange holiday 
was his ! He got into a smoking-car- 
riage in order to be alone, and he look- 
ed out on the people who were bidding 
their friends good-bye. Some of them 
were not very pretty, many of them 
were ordinary, insignificant, commoq- 
place-looking folks, but it was clear that 
they had those about them who loved 
them and thought much of them. There 
was one man whom, in other circum- 
stances, Lavender would have dismissed 
with contempt as an excellent specimen 
of the unmitigated cad. He wore a 
white waistcoat, purple gloves and a 
green sailor’s knot with a diamond in it, 
and there was a cheery, vacuous, smiling 
expression on his round face as he in- 
dustriously smoked a cheroot and made 
small jokes to the friends who had come 
to see him off. One of them was a 
young woman, not very good-looking 
perhaps, who did not join in the general 
hilarity ; and it occurred to Lavender 
that the jovial man with the cheroot was 
perhaps cracking his little jokes to keep 
up her spirits. At all events, he called 
her “my good lass ” from time to time, 
and patted her on the shoulder, and was 
very kind to her. And when the guard 
came up and bade everybody get in, the 
man kissed the girl and shook hands 
with her and bade her good-bye ; and 


then she, moved by some sudden im- 
pulse, caught his face in both her hands 
and kissed him once on each cheek. It 
was a ridiculous scene. People who 
wear green ties with diamond pins care 
nothing for decorum. And yet Laven- 
der, when he averted his eyes from this 
parting, could not help recalling what 
Ingram had been saying the night be- 
fore, and wondered whether this out- 
rageous person, with his abominable 
decorations and his genial grin, might 
not be more fortunate than many a great 
statesman or warrior or monarch. 

He turned round to find the cad be- 
side him ; and presently the man, with 
an abounding good-nature, began to 
converse with him, and explained that 
it was ’igh ’oliday with him, for that he 
had got a pass to travel first-class as far 
as Carlisle. He hoped they would have 
a jolly time of it together. He explain- 
ed the object of his journey in the frank- 
est possible fashion, made a kindly little 
joke upon the hardship of parting with 
one’s sweetheart, said that a faint heart 
never won fair lady, and that it was no 
good crying over spilt milk. She would 
be all right, and precious glad to see 
him when he came back in three weeks’ 
time, and he meant to bring her a pres- 
ent that would be good for sore eyes. 

“ Perhaps you’re a married man, sir, 
and got past all them games?” said the 
cad cheerily. 

“Yes, I am married,” said Lavender 
coldly. 

“And you’re going farther than Car- 
lisle, you say, sir? I’ll be sworn the 
good lady is up somewhere in that direc- 
tion, and she won’t be disappointed when 
she sees you — oh no ! Scotch, sir ?” 

“I am not Scotch,” said Lavender 
curtly. 

“And she ?” 

Should he have to throw the man out 
of the window ? “Yes.” 

“The Scotch are a strange race — 
very,” said the genial person, producing 
a brandy flask. “They drink a trifle, 
don’t they ? and yet they keep their wits 
about them if you’ve dealings with them. 
A very strange race of people, in my 
opinion— very. Know the story of the 


A PRINCESS OF TIIULE. 


193 


master who fancied his man was drunk ? 
‘ Donald, you’re trunk,’ says he. 4 It’s a 
tarn lee,’ says Donald. 4 Donald, ye ken 
ye’re trunk,’ says the master. 4 Ah ken 
ah wish to Kott ah was !’ says Donald. 
Good story, ain’t it, sir?” 

Lavender had heard the remarkable 
old joke a hundred times, but just at 
this moment there was something odd 
in this vulgar person suddenly imitating, 
and imitating very well, the Highland 
accent. Had he been away up in the 
North ? or had he merely heard the story 
related by one who had been ? Laven- 
der dared not ask, however, for fear of 
prolonging a conversation in which he 
had no wish to join. Indeed, to get rid 
of the man, he shoved a whole bundle 
of the morning papers into his hands. 

44 What’s your opinion of politics at 
present, sir ?” observed his friend in an 
off-hand way. 

“I haven’t any,” said Lavender, com- 
pelled to take back one of the news- 
papers and open it. 

44 1 think, myself, they’re in a bad 
state : that’s my opinion. There ain’t a 
man among ’em who knows how to keep 
down those people : that’s my opinion, 
sir. What do you think ?” 

44 Oh, I think so too,” said Lavender. 
44 You’ll find a good article in that paper 
on University Tests.” 

The cheery person looked rather blank. 

I would like to hear your opinion about 
’em, sir,” he said. 44 It ain’t much good 
reading only one side of a question, but 
when you can talk about it and discuss 
it, now — ” 

44 1 am sorry I can’t oblige you,” said 
Lavender, goaded into making some 
desperate effort to release himself. 44 1 
am suffering from relaxed throat at pres- 
ent. My doctor has warned me against 
talking too much.” 

44 1 beg your pardon, sir. You don’t 
seem very well : perhaps the throat comes 
with a little feverishness, you see — a 
cold, in fact. Now if I was you I’d try 
tannin lozenges for the throat. They’re 
uncommon good for the throat ; and a 
little quinine for the general system— 
that would put you as right as a fiver. 
I tried it myself when I was down in 


’Ampshire last year. And you wouldn’t 
find a drop of this brandy a bad thing, 
either, if you don’t mind rowing in the 
same boat as myself.” 

Lavender declined the proffered flask 
and subsided behind a newspaper. His 
fellow-traveler lit another cheroot, took 
up Bradshaw and settled himself in a 
corner. 

Had Sheila come up this very line 
some dozen hours before ? Lavender 
asked himself as he looked out on the 
hills and valleys and woods of Buck- 
inghamshire. Had the throbbing of 
the engine and the rattle of the wheels 
kept the piteous eyes awake all through 
the dark night, until the pale dawn 
showed the girl a wild vision of northern 
hills and moors, telling her she was get- 
ting near to her own country ? Not 
thus had Sheila proposed to herself to 
return home on the first holiday-time 
that should occur to them both. He 
began to think of his present journey 
as it might have been in other circum- 
stances. Would she have remembered 
any of those pretty villages which she 
saw one early morning long ago when 
they were bathed in sunshine and scarce- 
ly awake to the new day ? Would she 
be impatient at the delays at the stations, 
and anxious to hurry on to Westmore- 
land and Dumfries, to Glasgow, and 
Oban, and Skye, and then from Storno- 
way across the island to the little inn at 
Garra-na-hina ? Here, as he looked out 
of the window, the first indication of the 
wilder country became visible in the 
distant Berkshire hills. Close at hand 
the country lay green and bright under 
a brilliant sun, but over there in the east 
some heavy clouds darkened the land- 
scape, and the far hills seemed to.be 
placed amid a gloomy stretch of moor- 
land. Would not Sheila have been 
thrilled by this glimpse of the coming 
North ? She would have fancied that 
greater mountains lay far behind these 
rounded slopes hidden in mist. She 
would have imagined that no human 
habitations were near those rising plains 
of sombre hue, where the red-deer and 
the fox ought to dwell. And in her de- 
light at getting away from the fancied 


i 9 4 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


brightness of the South, would she not 
have been exceptionally grateful and 
affectionate toward himself, and striven 
to please him with her tender ways ? 

It was not a cheerful journey, this 
lonely trip to the North. Lavender got 
to Glasgow that night, and next morn- 
ing he went down, long before any pas- 
sengers could have thought of arriving, 
to the Clansman. He did not go near 
the big steamer, for he was known to the 
captain and the steward, but he hung 
about the quays, watching each person 
who went on board. Sheila certainly 
was not among the passengers by the 
Clansman. 

But she might have gone to Greenock 
and waited for the steamer there. Ac- 
cordingly, after the Clansman had start- 
ed on her voyage, he went into a neigh- 
boring hotel and had some breakfast, 
after which he crossed the bridge to the 
station and took rail for Greenock, where 
he arrived some time before the Clans- 
man made her appearance. He went 
down to the quay. It was yet early 
morning, and a cool fresh breeze was 
blowing in across the broad waters of 
the Frith, where the sunlight was shining 
on the white sails of the yachts and on 
the dipping and screaming sea-gulls. 
Far away beyond the pale blue moun- 
tains opposite lay the wonderful network 
of sea-loch and island through which 
one had to pass to get to the distant 
Lewis. How gladly at this moment 
would he have stepped on board the 
steamer with Sheila, and put out on that 
gleaming plain of sea, knowing that by 
and by they would sail into Stornoway 
harbor and find the wagonette there ! 
They would not hasten the voyage. She 
had never been round the Mull of Can- 
tyre, and so he would sit by her side and 
show her the wild tides meeting there, 
and the long jets of white foam shooting 
up the great wall of rock. He would 
show her the pale coast of Ireland ; and 
then they would see Islay, of which she 
had many a ballad and story. They 
would go through the narrow sound that 
is overlooked by the gloomy mountains 
of Jura. They would see the distant 
islands where the chief of Colonsay is 


still mourned for on the still evenings 
by the hapless mermaiden, who sings 
her wild song across the sea. They 
would keep wide of the dangerous cur- 
rents of Corryvreckan, and by and by 
they would sail into the harbor of Oban, 
the beautiful sea-town where Sheila first 
got a notion of the greatness of the world 
lying outside of her native island. 

What if she were to come down now 
from this busy little seaport, which lay 
under a pale blue smoke, and come out 
upon this pier to meet the free sunlight 
and the fresh sea-air blowing all about ? 
Surely at a great distance he could rec- 
ognize the proud, light step, and the 
proud, sad face. Would she speak to 
him, or go past him, with firm lips and 
piteous eyes, to wait for the great steam- 
er that was now coming along out of the 
eastern mist ? Lavender glanced vague- 
ly around the quays and the thorough- 
fares leading to them, but there was no 
one like Sheila there. In the distance 
he could hear the throbbing of the Clans- 
man’s engines as the big steamer came 
on through the white plain. The sun 
was warmer now on the bright waters 
of the Frith, and the distant haze over 
the pale blue mountains beyond had 
grown more luminous. Small boats 
went by, and here and there a yachts- 
man, scarlet-capped and in white cos- 
tume, was taking a leisurely breakfast 
on his deck. The sea-gulls circled about, 
or dipped down on the waters, or chased 
each other with screams and cries. Then 
the Clansman sailed into the quay, and 
there was a flinging of ropes and general 
hurry and bustle, while people came 
crowding round the gangways, calling 
out to each other in every variety of 
dialect and accent. 

Sheila was not there. He lingered 
about, and patiently waited for the start- 
ing of the steamer, not knowing how 
long she ordinarily remained at Green- 
ock. He was in no hurry, indeed, for 
after the vessel had gone he found him- 
self with a whole day before him, and 
with no fixed notion as to how it could 
be passed. 

In other circumstances he would have 
been in no difficulty as to the spending 


A PRINCESS 


OF THULE . 


of a bright forenoon and afternoon by 
the side of the sea. Or he could have 
run through to Edinburgh and called on 
some artist-friends there. Or he could 
have crossed the Frith and had a day’s 
ramble among the mountains. But now 
that he was satisfied that Sheila had not 
gone home all his fancies and hopes 
went back to London. She was in Lon- 
don. And while he was glad that she 
had not gone straight to her own people 
with a revelation of her wrongs, he 
scarcely dared speculate on what ad- 
ventures and experiences might have 
befallen those two girls turned out into 
a great city of which they were about 
equally ignorant. 

The day passed somehow, and at night 
he was on his way to London. Next 
morning he went down to Whitehall and 
saw Ingram. 

“Sheila has not gone back to the 
Highlands, so far as I can make out,” 
he said. 

“So much the better,” was the an- 
swer. 

“ What am I to do ? She must be in 
London, and who knows what may be- 
fall her ?” 

“I cannot tell you what you should 
do. Of course you would like to know 
where she is; and I fancy she would 
have no objection herself to letting you 
know that she was all right, so long as 
she knew that you would not go near 
her. I don’t think she has taken so de- 
cided a step merely for the purpose of 
being coaxed back again: that is not 
Sheila’s way.” 

“I won’t go near her,” he said. “I 
only want to know that she is safe and 
well. I will do whatever she likes, but 
I must know where she is, and that she 
has come to no harm.” 

“Well,” said Ingram slowly, “I was 
talking the matter over with Mrs. Lor- 
raine last night — ” 

“Does she know?” said Lavender, 
wincing somewhat. 

“Certainly,” Ingram answered. “I 
did not tell her. I had promised to go 
up there about something quite different, 
when she immediately began to tell me 
the news. Of course it was impossible 


195 

to conceal such a thing. Don’t all the 
servants about know ?” 

“ I don’t care who knows,” said Lav- 
ender moodily. “ What does Mrs. Lor- 
raine say about this affair?” 

“ Mrs. Lorraine says that it serves you 
right,” said Ingram bluntly. 

“ Thank her very much ! I like can- 
dor, especially in a fair-weather friend.” 

“Mrs. Lorraine is a better friend to 
you than you imagine,” Ingram said, 
taking no notice of the sneer. “When 
she thought that your going to their 
house continually was annoying Sheila, 
she tried to put a stop to it for Sheila’s 
sake. And now, at this very moment, 
she is doing her very best to find out 
where Sheila is ; and if she succeeds she 
means to go and plead your cause with 
the girl.” 

“ I will not have her do anything of 
the kind,” said Lavender fiercely. “I 
will plead my own cause with Sheila. 
I will have forgiveness from Sheila her- 
self alone — not brought to me by any 
intermeddling woman.” 

“ You need’t call names,” said Ingram 
coolly. “ But I confess I think you are 
right ; and I told Mrs. Lorraine that was 
what you would doubtless say. In any 
case, she can do no harm in trying to 
find out where Sheila is.” 

“And how does she propose to suc- 
ceed? Pollaky, the ‘Agony’ column, 
placards, or a bellman ? I tell you, In- 
gram, I won’t have that woman meddle 
in my affairs — coming forward as a Sis- 
ter of Mercy to heal the wounded, be-, 
stowing mock compassion, and laughing 
all the time.” 

“Lavender, you are beside yourself. 
That woman is one of the most good- 
natured, shrewd, clever and amiable 
women I have ever met. What has en- 
raged you ?” 

“ Bah ! She has got hold of you too, 
has she? I tell you she is a rank im- 
postor.” 

“An impostor!” said Ingram slowly. 
“ I have heard a good many people call- 
ed impostors. Did it ever occur to you 
that the blame of the imposture might 
possibly lie with the person imposed on ? 

I have heard of people falling into the 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


196 

delusion that a certain modest and sim- 
ple-minded man was a great politician 
or a great wit, although he had never 
claimed to be anything of the kind ; and 
then, when they found out that in truth 
he was just what he had pretended to 
be, they called out against him as an 
impostor. I have heard, too, of young 
gentlemen accusing women of imposture 
whose only crime was that they did not 
possess qualities which they had never 
pretended to possess, but which the 
young gentlemen fancied they ought to 
possess. Mrs. Lorraine may be an im- 
postor to you. I think she is a thor- 
oughly good woman, and I know she is 
a very delightful companion. And if 
you want to know how she means to 
find Sheila out, I can tell you. She 
thinks that Sheila would probably go to 
a hotel, but that afterward she would try 
to find lodgings with some of the people 
whom she had got to know through her 
giving them assistance. Mrs. Lorraine 
would like to ask your servants about 
the women who used to come for this 
help. Then, she thinks, Sheila would 
probably get some one of these humble 
friends to call for her letters, for she 
would like to hear from her father, and 
she would not care to tell him that she 
had left your house. There is a great 
deal of supposition in all this, but Mrs. 
Lorraine is a shrewd woman, and I 
would trust her instinct in such matters 
a long way. She is quite sure that Sheila 
would be too proud to tell her father, 
and very much averse, also, to inflicting 
so severe a blow on him.” 

‘‘But surely,” Lavender said hastily, 
“if Sheila wishes to conceal this affair 
for a time, she must believe it to be only 
temporary ? She cannot propose to make 
the separation final ?” 

‘‘That I don’t know anything about. 
I would advise you to go and see Mrs. 
Lorraine.” 

“ I won’t go and see Mrs. Lorraine.” 

“Now, this is unreasonable, Laven- 
der. You begin to fancy that Sheila had 
some sort of dislike to Mrs. Lorraine, 
founded on ignorance, and straightway 
you think it is your duty to go and 
hate the woman. Whatever you may 


think of her, she is willing to do you a 
service.” 

“Will you go, Ingram, and take her 
to those servants ?” 

“Certainly I will, if you commission 
me to do so,” said Ingram readily. 

“ I suppose they all know ?” 

“They do.” 

“And every one else ?” 

“I should think few of your friends 
would remain in ignorance of it.” 

“Ah, well,” said Lavender, “if only 
I could get Sheila to overlook what is 
past, this once, I should not trouble my 
dear friends and acquaintances for their 
sympathy and condolence. By the time 
I saw them again I fancy they would 
have forgotten our names.” 

There was no doubt of the fact that 
the news of Sheila’s flight from her hus- 
band’s house had traveled very speedily 
round the circle of Lavender’s friends, 
and doubtless in due time it reached the 
ears of his aunt. At all events, Mrs. 
Lavender sent a message to Ingram, 
asking him to come and see her. When 
he went he found the little, dry, hard- 
eyed woman in a terrible passion. She 
had forgotten all about Marcus Aurelius 
and the composure of a philosopher, and 
the effect of anger on the nervous system. 
She was bolstered up in bed, for she had 
had another bad fit, but she was brisk 
enough in her manner and fierce enough 
in her language. 

“Mr. Ingram,” she said the moment 
he had entered, “do you consider my 
nephew a beast ?” 

“ I don’t,” he said. 

" I do,” she retorted. 

“Then you are quite mistaken, Mrs. 
Lavender. Probably you have heard 
some exaggerated story of all this busi- 
ness. He has been very inconsiderate 
and thoughtless, certainly, but I don’t 
believe he quite knew how sensitive his 
wife was ; and he is very repentant now, 
and I know he will keep his promises.” 

“You would apologize for the devil,” 
said the little old woman frowning. 

“ I would try to give him his due, at 
all events,” said Ingram with a laugh. 
“I know Frank Lavender very well — I 
have known him for years— and I know 


A PRINCESS 


OF THULE. 


there is good stuff in him, which may- 
be developed in proper circumstances. 
After all, what is there more common 
than for a married man to neglect his 
wife ? He only did unconsciously and 
thoughtlessly what heaps of men do 
deliberately.” 

“You are making me angry,” said 
Mrs. Lavender in a severe voice. 

“ I don’t think it fair to expect men to 
be demigods,” Ingram said carelessly. 
“ I never met any demigods myself : 
they don’t live in my neighborhood. 
Perhaps if I had had some experience of 
a batch of them, I should be more cen- 
sorious of other people. If you set up 
Frank for a Bayard, is it his fault or 
yours ?” 

“ I am not going to be talked out of 
my common sense, and me on my death- 
bed,” said the old lady impatiently, and 
yet with some secret hope that Ingram 
would go on talking and amuse her. 
“ I won’t have you say he is anything 
but a stupid and ungrateful boy, who 
married a wife far too good for him. 
He is worse than that — he is much worse 
than that ; but as this may be my death- 
bed, I will keep a civil tongue in my 
head.” 

“I thought you didn’t like his wife 
very much ?” said Ingram. 

“ I am not bound to like her because 
I think badly of him, am I ? She was 
not a bad sort of girl, after all — temper 
a little stiff, perhaps ; but she was honest. 
It did one’s eyes good to look at her 
bright face. Yes, she was a good sort 
of creature in her way. But when she 
ran off from him, why didn’t she come 
to me ?” 

“Perhaps you never encouraged her.” 

“ Encouragement ! Where ought a 
married woman go to but to her hus- 
band’s relatives ? If she cannot stay 
with him, let her take the next best 
substitute. It was her duty to come to 
me.” 

“If Sheila had fancied it to be her 
duty, she would have come here at any 
cost.” 

“What do you mean, Mr. Ingram?” 
said Mrs. Lavender severely. 

“ Well, supposing she didn’t like you — ” 


197 

he was beginning to say cautiously, when 
she sharply interrupted him : 

“ She didn’t like me, eh ?” 

“ I said nothing of the kind. I was 
about to say that if she had thought it 
her duty to come here, she would have 
come in any circumstances.” 

“She might have done worse. A 
young woman risks a great deal in 
running away from her husband’s home. 
People will talk. Who is to make peo- 
ple believe just the version of the story 
that the husband or wife would prefer ?” 

“And what does Sheila care,” said 
Ingram with a hot flush in his face, “for 
the belief of a lot of idle gossips and 
slanderers ?” 

“My dear Mr. Ingram,” said the old 
lady, “you are not a woman, and you 
don’t know the bother one has to look 
after one’s reputation. But that is a 
question not likely to interest you. Let 
us talk of something else. Do you know 
why I wanted you to come and see me 
to-day ?” 

“ I am sure I don’t.” 

“ I mean to leave you all my money.” 

He stared. She did not appear to be 
joking. Was it possible that her rage 
against her nephew had carried her to 
this extreme resolve ? 

“Oh!” he stammered, “but I won’t 
have it, Mrs. Lavender.” 

“But you’ll have to have it,” said the 
little old woman severely. “You are a 
poor man. You could make good use of 
my money — better than a charity board 
that would starve the poor with a penny 
out of each shilling, and spend the other 
elevenpence in treating their friends to 
flower-shows and dinners. Do you think 
I mean to leave my money to such peo- 
ple ? You shall have it. I think you 
would look very well driving a mail- 
phaeton in the Park; and I suppose you 
would give up your pipes and your phi- 
losophy and your bachelor walks into 
the country. You would marry, of 
course : every man is bound to make a 
fool of himself that way as soon as he 
gets enough money to do it with. But 
perhaps you might come across a clever 
and sensible woman, who would look 
after you and give you your own way 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


198 

while having her own. Only don’t mar- 
ry a fool. Whatever you do, don’t mar- 
ry a fool, or all your philosophers won’t 
make the house bearable to you.” 

“ I am not likely to marry anybody, 
Mrs. Lavender,” said Ingram carelessly. 

“ Is there no woman you know whom 
you would care to marry ?” 

“Oh,” he said, “there is one woman 
— yes — who seems to me about every- 
thing that a man could wish, but the 
notion of my marrying her is absurd. 
If I had known in time, don’t you see, 
that I should ever think of such a thing, 

I should have begun years ago to dye 
my hair. I can’t begin now. Gray hair 
inspires reverence, I believe, but it is a 
bad thing to go courting with.” 

"You must not talk foolishly,” said 
the little old lady with a frown. “ Do 
you think a sensible woman wants to 
marry a boy who will torment her with 
his folly and his empty head and his 
running after a dozen different women ? 
Gray hair ! If you think gray hair is a 
bad thing to go courting with, I will give 
you something better. I will put some- 
thing in your hand that will make the 
young lady forget your gray hair. Oh, 
of course you will say that she cannot be 
tempted, that she despises money. If 
so, so much the better; but I have 
known more women than you, and my 
hair is grayer than yourS, and you will 
find that a little money won’t stand in 
the way of your being accepted.” 

He had made some gesture of pro- 
test, not against her speaking of his pos- 
sible marriage, which scarcely interested 
him, so remote was the possibility, but 
against her returning to this other pro- 
posal. And when he saw the old wo- 
man really meant to do this thing, he 
found it necessary to declare himself 
explicitly on the point. “ Oh, don’t im- 
agine, Mrs. Lavender,” he said, “that 
I have any wild horror of money, or 
that I suppose anybody else would have. 
I should like to have five times or ten 
times as much as you seem generously 
disposed to give me. But here is the 
point, you see. I am a vain person. I 
am very proud of my own opinion of 
myself; and if I acceded to what you 


propose — if I took your money — I sup- 
pose I should be driving about in that 
fine phaeton you speak of. That is very 
good: I like driving, and I should be 
pleased with the appearance of the trap 
and the horses. But what do you fancy 
I should think of myself— what would 
be my opinion of my own nobleness 
and generosity and humanity — if I saw 
Sheila Mackenzie walking by on the 
pavement, without any carriage to drive 
in, perhaps without a notion as to where 
she was going to get her dinner? I 
should be a great hero to myself then, 
shouldn’t I ?” 

"Oh, Sheila again!” said the old wo- 
man in a tone of vexation. “I can’t 
imagine what there is in that girl to make 
men rave so about her. That Jew-boy 
is become a thorough nuisance : you 
would fancy she had just stepped down 
out of the clouds to present him with a 
gold harp, and that he couldn’t look up 
to her face. And you are just as bad. 
You are worse, for you don’t blow it off 
in steam. Well, there need be no dif- 
ficulty. I meant to leave the girl in 
your charge. You take the money and 
look after her : I know she won’t starve. 
Take it in trust for her, if you like.” 

"But that is a fearful responsibility, 
Mrs. Lavender,” he said in dismay. 
"She is a married woman. Her hus- 
band is the proper person — ” 

"I tell you I won’t give him a farth- 
ing !” she said with a sudden sharpness 
that startled him — " not a farthing ! If 
he wants money, let him work for it, as 
other people do ; and then, when he has 
done that, if he is to have any of my 
money, he must be beholden for it to his 
wife and to you.” 

" Do you think that Sheila would ac- 
cept anything that she would not imme- 
diately hand over to him ?” 

“Then he must come first to you.” 

" I have no wish to inflict humiliation 
on any one,” said Ingram stiffly. "I 
don’t wish to play the part of a little 
Providence and mete out punishment in 
that way. I might have to begin with 
myself.” 

"Now, don’t be foolish,” said the old 
lady with a menacing composure. " I 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


1 99 


give you fair warning : the next fit will 
do for me. If you don’t care to take 
my money, and keep it in trust for this 
girl you profess to care so much about, 
I will leave it to found an institution. 
And I have a good idea for an institu- 
tion, mind you. I mean to teach people 
what they should eat and drink, and 
the various effects of food on various 
constitutions.” 

“ It is an important subject,” Ingram 
admitted. 

“ Is it not ? What is the use of giving 
people laborious information about the 
idle fancies of generations that lived 
ages before they were born, while you 
are letting them poison their system, and 
lay up for themselves a fearfully painful 
old age, by the continuous use of un- 
suitable food ? That book you gave me, 
Mr. Ingram, is a wonderful book, but it 
gives you little consolation if you know 
another fit is coming on. And what is 
the good of knowing about Epictetus 
and Zeno and the rest if you’ve got 
rheumatism ? Now, I mean to have 
classes to teach people what they should 
eat and drink ; and I’ll do it if you won’t 
assume the guardianship of my nephew’s 
wife.” 

” But this is the wildest notion I ever 
heard of,” Ingram protested again. 
“How can I take charge of her? If 
Sheila herself had shown any disposition 
to place herself under your care, it 
might have been different.” 

“Oh, it would have been different!” 
cried the old lady with a shrill laugh. 
‘‘It would have been different! And 
what did you say about her sense of 
duty to her husband’s relatives? Did 
you say anything about that ?” 

‘‘Well — ” Ingram was about to say, 
being lost in amazement at the odd glee 
of this withered old creature. 

‘‘Where do you think a young wife 
should go if she runs off from her hus- 
band’s house?” cried Mrs. Lavender, 
apparently much amused by his per- 
plexity. ‘‘Where can she best escape 
calumny ? Poor man ! I won’t frighten 
you or disturb you any longer. Ring 
the bell, will you ? I want Paterson.” 

Ingram rang. 


"Paterson,” said Mrs. Lavender when 
the tall and grave woman appeared, 
"ask Mrs. Lavender if she can come 
here for a few minutes.” 

Ingram looked at the old woman to 
see if she had gone mad, and then, 
somehow, he instinctively turned to the 
door. He fancied he knew that quick, 
light step. And then, before he well 
knew how, Sheila had come forward to 
him with her hands outstretched and 
with something like a smile on her pale 
face. She looked at him for a second, 
she tried to speak to him, but there was 
a dangerous quivering of the lips ; and 
then she suddenly burst into tears, and 
let go his hands and turned away. In 
that brief moment he had seen what 
havoc had been wrought within the past 
two or three days. There were the same 
proud and handsome features, but they 
were pale and worn, and there was a 
piteous and weary look in the eyes that 
told of the trouble and heartrending of 
sleepless nights. 

"Sheila,” he said, following her and 
taking her hand, "does any one know 
of your being here ?” 

"No,” she said, still holding her head 
aside and downcast — "no one. And I 
do not wish any one to know. I am 
going away.” 

"Where ?” 

"Don’t you ask too much, Mr. In- 
gram,” said the old lady from amid her 
cushions and curtains. “ Give her that 
ammonia — the stopper only. Now, sit 
down, child, and dry your eyes. You 
need not be ashamed to show Mr. In- 
gram that you knew where you ought to 
come to when you left your husband’s 
house. And if you won’t stop here, of 
course I can’t compel you, though Mr. 
Ingram will tell you you might do 
worse.” 

" Sheila, why do you wish to go away ? 
Do you mean to go back to the Lewis ?” 

"Oh no, no!” she said, almost shud- 
dering. 

"Where do you wish to go ?” 

"Anywhere — it does not matter. But 
I cannot remain here. I should meet 
with — with many people I used to know. 
Mrs. Lavender, she is kind enough to 


200 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


say she will get me some place for Mairi 
and me : that is all as yet that is settled.” 

‘‘Is Mairi with you ?” 

‘‘Yes : I will go and bring her to you. 
It is not any one in London she will 
want to see as much as you.” 

Sheila left the room, and by and by 
came back, leading the young Highland 
girl by the hand. Mairi was greatly 
embarrassed, scarcely knowing whether 
she should show any gladness at meet- 
ing this old friend amid so much trouble. 
But when Ingram shook hands with her, 
and after she had blushed and looked 
shy and said, ‘‘And are you ferry well, 
sir?” she managed somehow to lift her 
eyes to his face ; and then she said sud- 
denly, “And it is a good day, this day, 
for Miss Sheila, that you will come to 
see her, Mr. Ingram, for she will hef a 
friend now.” 

“You silly girl,” said Mrs. Lavender 
sharply, “ why will you say ‘ Miss Sheila ?’ 
Don’t you know she is a married wo- 
man ?” 

Mairi glanced in a nervous and timid 
manner toward the bed. She was evi- 
dently afraid of the little shriveled old 
woman with the staring black eyes and 
the harsh voice. 

“ Mairi hasn’t forgotten her old habits, 
that is all,” said Ingram, patting her 
good-naturedly on the head. 

And then he sat down again, and it 
seemed so strange to him to see these 
two together again, and to hear the odd 
inflection of Mairi’s voice, that he almost 
forgot that he had made a great dis- 
covery in learning of Sheila’s where- 
abouts, and wholly forgot that he had 
just been offered, and had just refused, 
a fortune. 


CHAPTER XXI. 

MEETING AND PARTING. 

The appearance of Sheila in Mrs. 
Lavender’s house certainly surprised In- 
gram, but the motives which led her to 
go thither were simple enough. On the 
morning on which she had left her hus- 
band’s house she and Mairi had been 
driven up to Euston Square Station be- 


fore she seemed capable of coming to 
any decision. Mairi guessed at what 
had happened with a great fear at her 
heart, and did not dare to speak of it. 
She sat, mute and frightened, in a cor- 
ner of the cab, and only glanced from 
time to time at her companion’s pale 
face and troubled and distant eyes. 

They were driven in to the station. 
Sheila got out, still seeming to know 
nothing of what was around her. The 
cabman took down Mairi’s trunk and 
handed it to a porter. 

“Where for, miss?” said the man. 
And she started. 

“Where will you be going, Miss Shei- 
la?” said Mairi timidly. 

“ It is no matter just now,” said Sheila 
to the porter, “if you will be so kind as 
to take charge of the trunk. And how 
much must I pay the cabman from Hot- 
ting Hill ?” 

She gave him the money and walked 
into the great stone-paved hall, with its 
lofty roof and sounding echoes. 

“ Mairi,” she said, “ I have gone away 
from my own home, and I have no home 
for you or myself either. What are we 
to do ?” 

“Are you quite sure, Miss Sheila,” 
said the girl, dismayed beyond expres- 
sion, “ that you will not go back to your 
own house ? It wass a bad day this day 
that I wass come to London to find you 
going away from your own house and 
Mairi began to cry. “ Will we go back 
to the Lewis, Miss Sheila?” she said. 
“ It is many a one there will be proud 
and pleased to see you again in sa Lew- 
is, and there will be plenty of homes for 
you there — oh yes, ferry many that will 
be glad to see you ! And it wass a bad 
day sa day you left the Lewis whatever ; 
and if you will go back again, Miss 
Sheila, you will neffer hef to go aw\ay 
again, not any more.” 

Sheila looked at the girl — at the pretty 
pale face, the troubled light-blue eyes and 
the abundant fair-yellow hair. It was 
Mairi, sure enough, who was talking to 
her, and yet it was in a strange place. 
There was no sea dashing outside, no 
tide running in from the Atlantic. And 
where was old Scarlett, with her com- 


A PRINCESS. OF THULE. 


201 


plaints and her petulance and her moth- 
erly kindness ? 

“ It is a pity you have come to Lon- 
don, Mairi,” Sheila said wistfully; “for 
I have no house to take you into ; and 
we must go now and find one.” 

“You will not go back to sa Lewis, 
Miss Sheila ?” 

“They would not know me in the 
Lewis any more, Mairi. I have been 
too long away, and I am quite changed. 
It is many a time I will think of going 
back ; but when I left the Lewis I was 
married, and now — How could I go 
back to the Lewis, Mairi ? They would 
look at me. They would ask questions. 
My father would come down to the 
quay, and he would say, ‘ Sheila, have 
you come back alone ?’ And all the 
story of it would go about the island, 
and every one would say I had been a 
bad wife, and my husband had gone 
away from me.” 

“There is not any one,” said Mairi, 
with the tears starting to her eyes again 
— “not from one end of sa island to sa 
other — would say that of you, Miss Shei- 
la ; and there is no one would not come 
to meet you, and be glad sat you will 
come again to your own home. And as 
for going back, I will be ferry glad to 
go back whatever, for it was you I was 
come to see, and not any town ; and I 
do not like this town, what I hef seen of 
it, and I will be ferry glad to go away 
wis you, Miss Sheila.” 

Sheila did not answer. She felt that 
it was impossible she could go back to 
her own people with this disgrace upon 
her, and did not even argue the ques- 
tion with herself. All her trouble now 
was to find some harbor of refuge into 
which she could flee, so that she might 
have quiet and solitude, and an oppor- 
tunity of studying all that had befallen 
her. The noise around her— the arrival 
of travelers, the transference of luggage, 
the screaming of trains — stunned and 
confused her ; and she could only vaguely 
think of all the people she knew in Lon- 
don, to see to whom she could go for ad- 
vice and direction. They were not many. 
One after the other she went over the 
acquaintances she had made, and not 


one of them appeared to her in the light 
of a friend. One friend she had who 
would have rejoiced to be of the least 
assistance to her, but her husband had 
forbidden her to hold communication 
with him, and she felt a strange sort of 
pride, even at this moment, in resolving 
to obey that injunction. In all this great 
city that lay around her there was no 
other to whom she could frankly and 
readily go. That one friend she had 
possessed before she came to London : 
in London she had not made another. 

And yet it was necessary to do some- 
thing, for who could tell but that her 
husband might come to this station in 
search of her ? Mairi’s anxiety, too, 
was increasing every moment, insomuch 
that she was fairly trembling with ex- 
citement and fatigue. Sheila resolved 
that she would go down and throw her- 
self on the tender mercies of that ter- 
rible old lady in Kensington Gore. For 
one thing, she instinctively sought the 
help of a woman in her present plight ; 
and perhaps this harshly -spoken old 
lady would be gentle to her when all 
her story was told. Another thing that 
prompted this decision was a sort of 
secret wish to identify herself even yet 
with her husband’s family — to prove to 
herself, as it were, that they had not 
cast her off as being unworthy of him. 
Nothing was farther from her mind at 
this moment than any desire to pave the 
way for reconciliation and reunion with 
her husband. Her whole anxiety was 
to get away from him, to put an end to 
a stale of things which she had found 
to be more than she could bear. And 
yet, if she had had friends in London 
called respectively Mackenzie and Lav- 
ender, and if she had been equally in- 
timate with both, she would at this mo- 
ment have preferred to go for help to 
those bearing the name of Lavender. 

There was doubtless something strange- 
ly inconsistent in this instinct of wifely 
loyalty and duty in a woman who had 
just voluntarily left her husband’s house. 
Lavender had desired her not to hold 
communication with Edward Ingram : 
even now she would respect his wish. 
Lavender would prefer that she should, 


202 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


in any great extremity, go to his aunt for 
assistance and counsel ; and to his aunt, 
despite her own dislike of the woman, 
she would go. At this moment, when 
Sheila’s proud spirit had risen up in re- 
volt against a system of treatment that 
had become insufferable to her, when 
she had been forced to leave her home 
and incur the contemptuous compassion 
of friends and acquaintances, if Edward 
Ingram himself had happened to meet 
her, and had begun to say hard things 
of Lavender, she would have sharply 
recalled him to a sense of the discretion 
that one must use in speaking to a wife 
of her husband. 

The two homeless girls got into an- 
other cab, and were driven down to 
Kensington Gore. Sheila asked if she 
could see Mrs. Lavender. She knew 
that the old lady had had another bad fit, 
but she was supposed to be recovering 
rapidly. Mrs. Lavender would see her 
in her bedroom, and so Sheila went up. 
The girl could not speak. 

“Yes, I see it — something wrong about 
that precious husband of yours,” said 
the old lady, watching her keenly. 
“I expected it. Go on. What is the 
matter ?” 

"I have left him,” Sheila said with 
her face very pale, but no sign of emo- 
tion about the firm lips. 

“ Oh, good gracious, child ! Left him ? 
How many people know it?” 

. “No one but yourself and a young 
Highland girl who has come up to see 
me.” 

“You came to me first of ail ?’ 

“Yes.” 

“ Have you no other friends to go to ?” 

“I considered that I ought to come to 
you.” 

There was no cunning in the speech : 
it was the simple truth. Mrs. Lavender 
looked at her hard for a second or two, 
and then said, in what she meant to be 
a kind way, “Come here and sit down, 
child, and tell me all about it. If no 
one else knows it there is no harm done. 
We can easily patch it up before it gets 
abroad.” 

“ I did not come to you for that, Mrs. 
Lavender,” said Sheila calmly. “That 


is impossible : that is all over. I have 
come to ask you where I may get lodg- 
ings for my friend and myself.” 

“Tell me all about it first, and then 
we’ll see whether it can’t be mended. 
Mind, I am ready to be on your side, 
though I am your husband’s aunt. I 
think you’re a good girl : a bit of a tem- 
per, you know, but you manage to keep 
it quiet ordinarily. You tell me all 
about it, and you’ll see if I haven’t 
means to bring him to reason. Oh yes, 
oh yes, I’m an old woman, but I can 
find some means to bring him to rea- 
son.” And she laughed an odd, shrill 
laugh. 

A hot flush came over Sheila’s face. 
Had she come to this old woman only 
to make her husband’s degradation more 
complete? Was he to be intimidated 
into making friends with her by a threat 
of the withdrawal of that money that 
Sheila had begun to detest ? And this 
was what her notions of wifely duty had 
led to ! 

“Mrs. Lavender,” she said, with the 
proud lips very proud indeed, "I must 
say this to you before I tell you any- 
thing. It is very good of you to say you 
will take my side, but I did not come to 
you to complain. And I would rather 
not have any sympathy from you if it 
only means that you will speak ill of my 
husband. And if you think you can 
make him do'things because you give 
him money, perhaps that is true at pres- 
ent, but it may not always be true, and 
you cannot expect me to wish it to con- 
tinue. I would rather have my present 
trouble twenty times over than see him 
being bought over to any woman’s 
wishes.” 

Mrs. Lavender stared at her: “Why, 
you astonishing girl, I believe you are 
still in love with that man !” 

Sheila s^id nothing. 

"Is it true?” she said. 

“I suppose a woman ought to love 
her husband,” Sheila answered. 

“Even if he turns her out of the 
house ?” 

“ Perhaps it is she who is to blame,” 
Sheila said humbly. “ Perhaps her edu- 
cation was wrong, or she expects too 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


203 


much that is unreasonable, or perhaps 
she has a bad temper. You think I 
have a bad temper, Mrs. Lavender, and 
might it not be that ?” 

“Well, I think you want your own 
way, and doubtless you expect to have 
it now. I suppose I am to listen to all 
your story, and I must not say a word 
about my own nephew. But sit down 
and tell me all about it, and then you 
can justify him afterward, if you like.” 

It was probably, however, the notion 
that Sheila would try to justify Laven- 
der all through that put the old lady on 
her guard, and made her, indeed, regard 
Lavender’s conduct in an unfairly bad 
light. Sheila told the story as simply 
as she could, putting everything down 
to her husband’s advantage that was 
possible, and asking for no sympathy 
whatsoever. She only wanted to re- 
main away from his house ; and by what 
means could she and this young cousin 
of hers find cheap lodgings where they 
could live quietly and without much fear 
of detection ? 

Mrs. Lavender was in a rage, and as 
she was not allowed to vent it on the 
proper object, she turned upon Sheila 
herself. “ The Highlanders are a proud 
race,” she said sharply. “ I should have 
thought that rooms in this house, even 
with the society of a cantankerous old 
woman, would have been tolerated for a 
time.” 

“ It is very kind of you to make the 
offer,” Sheila said, "but I do not wish 
to have to meet my husband or any of 
his friends. There is enough trouble 
without that. If you could tell me 
where to get lodgings not far from this 
neighborhood, I would come to see you 
sometimes at such hours as I know he 
cannot be here.” 

“But I don’t understand what you 
mean. You won’t go back to your hus- 
band, although I could manage that for 
you directly — you won’t hear of negotia- 
tions, or of any prospect of your going 
back — and yet you won’t go home to 
your father.” 

“I cannot do either,” Sheila said. 

“ Do you mean to live in those lodg- 
ings always ?” 


“ How can I tell ?” said the girl piteous- 
ly. “ I only wish to be away, and I can- 
not go back to my papa, with all this 
story to tell him.” 

“Well, I didn’t want to distress you,” 
said the old woman. “You know your 
own affairs best. I think you are mad. 
If you would calmly reason with your- 
self, and show to yourself that, in a 
hundred years, or less than that, it won’t 
matter whether you gratified your pride 
or no, you would see that the wisest 
thing you can do now is to take an easy 
and comfortable course. You are in an 
excited and nervous state at present, for 
example ; and that is destroying so 
much of the vital portion of your frame. 
If you go into these lodgings and live 
like a rat in a hole, you will have noth- 
ing to do but nurse these sorrows of 
yours, and find them grow bigger and 
bigger while you grow more and more 
wretched. All that is mere pride and 
sentiment and folly. On the other hand, 
look at this. Your husband is sorjry you 
are away from him : you may take that 
for granted. You say he was merely 
thoughtless : now he has got something 
to make him think, and would without 
doubt come and beg your pardon if you 
gave him a chance. I write to him, he 
comes down here, you kiss and make 
good friends again, and to - morrow 
morning you are comfortable and happy 
again.” 

“To-morrow morning!” said Sheila 
sadly. “ Do you know how we should 
be situated to-morrow morning? The 
story of my going away would become 
known to his friends: he would go 
among them as though he had suffered 
some disgrace, and I the cause of it. 
And though he is a man, and would 
soon be careless of that, how could I go 
with him amongst his friends, and feel 
that I had shamed him ? It would be 
worse than ever between us ; and I have 
no wish to begin again what ended this 
morning — none at all, Mrs. Lavender.” 

“And do you mean to say that you 
intend to live permanently apart from 
your husband ?” 

“I do not know,” said Sheila in a 
despairing tone. “I cannot tell you. 


204 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


What I feel is that, with all this trouble, 
it is better that our life as it was in that 
house should come to an end.” 

Then she rose. There was a tired 
look about the face, as if she were too 
weary to care whether this old woman 
would help her or no. Mrs. Lavender 
regarded her for a moment, wondering, 
perhaps, that a girl so handsome, fine- 
colored and proud-eyed should be dis- 
tressing herself with imaginary senti- 
ments, instead of taking life cheerfully, 
enjoying the hour as it passed, and 
being quite assured of the interest and 
liking and homage of every one with 
whom she came in contact. Sheila 
turned to the bed once more, about to 
say that she had troubled Mrs. Laven- 
der too much already, and that she 
would look after these lodgings. But 
the old woman apparently anticipated 
as much, and said with much delibera- 
tion that if Sheila and her companion 
would only remain one or two days in 
the hoqse, proper rooms should be pro- 
vided for them somewhere. Young 
girls could not venture into lodgings 
without strict inquiries being made. 
Sheila should have suitable rooms, and 
Mrs. Lavender would see that she was 
properly looked after and that she want- 
ed for nothing. In the mean time she 
must have some money. 

‘‘It is kind of you,” said the girl, 
blushing hotly, “ but I do not require 
it.” 

“Oh, I suppose we are too proud,” 
said the old woman. “ If we disapprove 
of our husband taking money, we must 
not do it either. Why, child, you have 
learnt nothing in London. You are a 
savage yet. You must let me give you 
something for your pocket, or what are 
you to do ? You say you have left 
everything at home : do you think hair- 
brushes, for example, grow on trees, that 
you can go into Kensington Gardens 
and stock your rooms ?” 

“I have some money — a few pounds 
— that my papa gave me,” Sheila said. 

“And when that is done ?” 

“ He will give me more.” 

“And yet you don’t wish him to know 
you have left your husband’s house! 


What will he make of these repeated 
demands for money ?” 

“My papa will give me anything I 
want without asking any questions.” 

“ Then he is a bigger fool than I ex- 
pected. Oh, don’t get into a temper 
again. Those sudden shocks of color, 
child, show me that your heart is out of 
order. How can you expect to have a 
regular pulsation if you flare up at any- 
thing any one may say ? Now go and 
fetch me your Highland cousin.” 

Mairi came into the room in a very 
timid fashion, and stared with her big, 
light-blue eyes into the dusky recess in 
which the little old woman sat up in 
bed. Sheila took her forward : “ This 
is my cousin Mairi, Mrs. Lavender.” 

“And are you ferry well, ma’am?” 
said Mairi, holding out her hand very 
much as a boy pretends to hold out 
his hand to a tiger in the Zoological 
Gardens. 

“Well, young lady,” said Mrs. Laven- 
der, staring at her, “ and a pretty mess 
you have got us into !” 

“Me!” said Mairi, almost with a cry 
of pain : she had not imagined before 
that she had anything to do with Shei- 
la’s trouble. 

“No, no, Mairi,” her companion said, 
taking her hand, “ it was not you. Mrs. 
Lavender, Mairi does not understand 
our way of joking in London. Perhaps 
she will learn before she goes back to 
the Highlands.” 

“There is one thing,” said Mrs. Lav- 
ender, observing that Mairi’s eyes had 
filled the moment she was charged with 
bringing trouble on Sheila — “there is one 
thing you people from the Highlands 
seem never disposed to learn, and that 
is to have a little control over your pas- 
sions. If one speaks to you a couple of 
words, you either begin to cry or go off 
into a flash of rage. Don’t you know 
how bad that is for the health ?” 

“And yet,” said Sheila with a smile 
— and it seemed so strange to Mairi to 
see her smile — “we will not compare 
badly in health with the people about 
us here.” 

Mrs. Lavender dropped the question, 
and began to explain to Sheila what she 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


205 


advised her to do. In the mean time 
both the girls were to remain in her 
house. She would guarantee their be- 
ing met by no one. When suitable 
rooms had been looked out by Paterson 
they were to remove thither. The whole 
situation of affairs was at once perceived 
by Mrs. Lavender’s attendant, who was 
given to understand that no one was to 
know of young Mrs. Lavender’s being in 
the house. Then the old woman, much 
contented with what she had done, re- 
solved that she would reward herself with 
a joke, and sent for Edward Ingram. 

When Sheila, as already described, 
came into the room, and found her old 
friend there, the resolution she had form- 
ed went clean out of her mind. She 
forgot entirely the ban that had been 
placed on Ingram by her husband. But 
after her first emotion on seeing him 
was over, and when he began to discuss 
what she ought to do, and even to ad- 
vise her in a diffident sort of way, she 
remembered all that she had forgotten, 
and was ashamed to find herself sitting 
there and talking to him as if it were 
in her father’s house at Borva. Indeed, 
when he proposed to take the manage- 
ment of her affairs into his own hands, 
and to go and look at certain apart- 
ments that Paterson had proposed, she 
was forced, with great heart-burning and 
pain, to hint to him that she could not 
avail herself of his kindness. 

“But why ?” he asked with a stare of 
surprise. 

“You remember Brighton,’’ she an- 
swered, looking down. “You had a 
bad return for your kindness to me 
then.” 

“Oh, I know,” he said carelessly. 
“And I suppose Mr. Lavender wished 
you to cut me after my impertinent in- 
terference. But things are very much 
changed now. But for the time he went 
North, he has been with me nearly every 
hour since you left.” 

“Has Frank been to the Lewis ?” she 
said suddenly, with a look of fear on her 
face. 

“ Oh no : he has only been to Glas- 
gow to see if you had gone to catch the 
Clansman and go North from there.” 


“Did he take the trouble to do all 
that?” she asked slowly and wistfully. 

“Trouble!” cried Ingram. “He ap- 
pears to me neither to eat nor sleep day 
or night, but to go wandering about in 
search of you in every place where he 
fancies you may be. I never saw a 
man so beside himself with anxiety.” 

“ I did not wish to make him anxious,” 
said Sheila in a low voice. “Will you 
tell him that I am well ?” 

Mrs. Lavender began to smile. Were 
there not evident signs of softening ? 
But Ingram, who knew the girl better, 
was not deceived by these appearances. 
He could see that Sheila merely wished 
that her husband should not suffer pain 
on her account : that was all. 

“I was about to ask you,” he said 
gently, “what I may say to him. He 
comes to me continually, for he has 
always fancied that you would commu- 
nicate with me. What shall I say to 
him, Sheila ?” 

“You may tell him that I am well,” 
she answered. 

Mairi had by this time stepped out of 
the room. Sheila sat with her eyes fix- 
ed on the floor, her fingers working ner- 
vously with a paper-knife she held. 

“Nothing more than that ?” he said. 

“Nothing more.” 

He saw by her face, and he could tell 
by the sound of her voice, that her de- 
cision was resolute. 

“Don’t be a fool, child!” said Mrs. 
Lavender emphatically. “ Here is your 
husband’s friend, who can make every- 
thing straight and comfortable for you 
in an hour or two, and you quietly put 
aside the chance of reconciliation and 
bring on yourself any amount of misery. 
I don’t speak for Frank. Men can take 
care of themselves : they have clubs 
and friends, and amusements for the 
whole day long. But you ! — what a 
pleasant life you would have, shut up in 
a couple of rooms, scarcely daring to 
show yourself at a window ! Your fine 
sentiments are all very well, but they 
won’t stand in the place of a husband 
to you ; and you will soon find out the 
difference between living by yourself 
like that, and having some one in the 


20 6 


A PRIA T CESS OF THULE. 


house to look after you. Am I right, 
Mr. Ingram, or am I wrong?” 

Ingram paused for a moment, and 
said, “ I have not the same courage that 
you have, Mrs. Lavender. I dare not 
advise Sheila one way or the other just 
at present. But if she feels in her own 
heart that she would rather return now 
to her husband, I can safely say that 
she would find him deeply grateful to 
her, and that he would try to do every- 
thing that she desired. That I know. 
He wants to see you, Sheila, if only for 
five minutes, to beg your forgiveness.” 

“I cannot see him,” she said with the 
same sad and settled air. 

“ I am not to tell him where you are ?” 

“Oh no!” she cried with a sudden 
and startled emphasis. “You must not 
do that, Mr. Ingram. Promise me you 
will not do that ?” 

“ I do promise you ; but you put a 
painful duty on me, Sheila, for you know 
how he will believe that a short inter- 
view with you would put everything 
right, and he will look on me as pre- 
venting that.” 

“Do you think a short interview at 
present would put everything right?” 
she said, suddenly looking up and re- 
garding him with her clear and steadfast 
eyes. 

He dared not answer. He felt in his 
inmost heart that it would not. 

“Ah, well,” said Mrs. Lavender, 
“young people have much satisfaction 
in being proud : when they come to my 
age, they may find they would have 
been happier if they had been less dis- 
dainful.” 

“It is not disdain, Mrs. Lavender,” 
said Sheila gently. 

“ Whatever it is,” said the old woman, 
“I must remind you two people that I 
am an invalid. Go away and have 
luncheon : Paterson will look after you. 
Mr. Ingram, give me that book, that I 
may read myself into a nap,r and don’t 
forget what I expect of you.” 

Ingram suddenly remembered. He 
and Sheila and Mairi sat down to lunch- 
eon in the dining-room, and while he 
strove to get them to talk about Borva 
he was thinking all the time of the ex- 


traordinary position he was expected to 
assume toward Sheila. Not only was 
he to be the repository of the secret of 
her place of residence, and the message- 
carrier between herself and her husband, 
but he was also to take Mrs. Lavender’s 
fortune, in the event of her dying, and 
hold it in trust for the young wife. Sure- 
ly this old woman, with her suspicious 
ways and her worldly wisdom, would 
not be so foolish as to hand him over 
all her property, free of conditions, on 
the simple understanding that when he 
chose he could give what he chose to 
Sheila ? And yet that was what she had 
vowed she would do, to Ingram’s pro- 
found dismay. 

He labored hard to lighten the spirits 
of those two girls. He talked of John 
the Piper, and said he would invite him 
up to London, and described his prob- 
able appearance in the Park. He told 
them stories of his adventures while he 
was camping out with some young artists 
in the Western Highlands, and told them 
anecdotes, old, recent and of his own 
invention, about the people he had met. 
Had they heard of the steward on board 
one of the Clyde steamers who had a 
percentage on the drink consumed in 
the cabin, and who would call out to the 
captain, “ Why wass you going so fast r 
Dinna put her into the quay so fast! 
There is a gran’ company down below, 
and they are drinking fine !” Had he 
ever told them of the porter at Arran 
who had demanded sixpence for car- 
rying up some luggage, but who, after 
being sent to get a sovereign changed, 
came back with only eighteen shillings, 
saying, “Oh yes, it iss sexpence! Oh, 
ay, it iss sexpence ! But it iss two shul- 
lens ta you!" Or of the other, who 
after being paid hung about the cottage- 
door for nearly an hour, until Ingram, 
coming out, asked him why he had wait- 
ed ; whereupon he said, with an air of 
perfect indifference, “Oo, ay, there was 
something said about a dram ; but hoot 
toots ! it is of no consequence whatever !” 
And was it true that the sheriff of Stor- 
noway was so kind-hearted a man that 
he remitted the punishment of certain 
culprits, ordained by the statute to be 


A PRINCESS OP THULE . 


207 


whipped with birch rods, on the ground 
that the island of Lewis produced no 
birch, and that he was not bound to im- 
port it ? And had Mairi heard any- 
more of the Black Horse of Loch Suaina- 
bhal ? And where had she pulled those 
splendid bunches of bell-heather ? 

He suddenly stopped, and Sheila look- 
ed up with inquiring eyes. How did he 
know that Mairi had brought those things 
with her ? Sheila saw that he must have 
gone up with her husband, and must 
have seen the room which she had dec- 
orated in imitation of the small parlor 
at Borvabost. She would rather not 
think of that room now. 

“When are you going to the Lewis ?” 
she asked of him with her eyes cast 
down. 

“Well, I think I have changed my 
mind about that, Sheila. I don’t think 
I shall go to the Lewis this autumn.” 

Her face became more and more em- 
barrassed : how was she to thank him 
for his continued thoughtfulness and 
self-sacrifice ? 

“There is no necessity,” he said light- 
ly. “The man I am going with has no 
particular purpose in view. We shall 
merely go cruising about those wonder- 
ful lochs and islands, and I am sure to 
run against some of those young fellows 
I know, who are prowling about the fish- 
ing-villages with portable easels. They 
are good boys, those boys. They are 
very hospitable, if they have only a 
single bedroom in a small cottage as 
their studio and reception-room com- 
bined. I should not wonder, Sheila, if 
I went ashore somewhere, and put up 
my lot with those young fellows, and lis- 
tened to their wicked stories, and lived 
on whisky and herrings for a month. 
Would you like to see me return to 
Whitehall in kilts? And I should go 
into the office and salute everybody with 
‘And are you ferry well?’ just as Mairi 
does. But don’t be downhearted, Mairi. 
You speak English a good deal better 
than many English folks I know ; and 
by the time you go back to the Lewis 
we shall have you fit to become a school- 
mistress, not only in Borva, but in Stor- 
noway itself.” 


“ I wass told it is ferry good English 
they hef in Stornoway,” said Mairi, not 
very sure whether Mr. Ingram was joking 
or not. 

“ My dear child,” he cried, “ I tell you 
it is the best English in the world. If 
the queen only knew, she would send 
her grandchildren to be educated there. 
But I must go now. Good-bye, Mairi. 
I mean to come and take you to a theatre 
some night soon.” 

Sheila accompanied him out into the 
hall. “When shall you see him ?” she 
said with her eyes cast down. 

“This evening,” he answered. 

“ I should like you to tell him that I 
am well, and that he need not be anxious 
about me.” 

“And that is all ?” 

“Yes, that is all.” 

“Very well, Sheila. I wish you had 
given me a pleasanter message to carry, 
but when you think of doing that I shall 
be glad to take it.” 

Ingram left, and hastened in to his 
office. Sheila’s affairs were considerably 
interfering with his attendance there — 
there could be no question of that — but 
he had the reputation of being able to 
get through his work thoroughly, what- 
ever might be the hours he devoted to 
it, so that he did not greatly fear be- 
ing rebuked for his present irregularities. 
Perhaps if a grave official warning had 
been probable, even that would not have 
interfered much with his determination 
to do what could be done for Sheila. 

But this business of carrying a mes- 
sage to Lavender was the most serious 
he had as yet undertaken. He had to 
make sundry and solemn resolves to 
put a bold face on the matter at the out- 
set, and declare that wild horses would 
not tear from him any further informa- 
tion. He feared the piteous appeals that 
might be made to him ; the representa- 
tions that, merely for the sake of an im- 
prudent promise, he was delaying a rec- 
onciliation between these two until that 
might be impossible ; the reasons that 
would be urged on him for considering 
Sheila’s welfare as paramount to his own 
scruples. He went through the inter- 
view, as he foresaw it, a dozen times over, 


14 


208 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


and constructed replies to each argument 
and entreaty. Of course it would be 
simple enough to meet all Lavender’s 
demands with a simple “No,” but there 
are circumstances in which the heroic 
method of solving difficulties becomes a 
trifle inhuman. 

He had promised to dine with Laven- 
der that evening at his club. When he 
went along to St. James’s street at the ap- 
pointed hour his host had not arrived. 
He walked for about ten minutes, and 
then Lavender appeared, haggard and 
womout with fatigue. “I have heard 
nothing — I can hear nothing — I have 
been everywhere,” he said, leading the 
way at once into the dining-room. “I 
am sorry I have kept you waiting, In- 
gram.” 

They sat down at a small side-table : 
there were few men in the club at this 
late season, so that they could talk freely 
enough when the waiter had come and 
gone. 

“Well, I have some news for you, 
Lavender,” Ingram said. 

“Do you know where she is?” said 
the other eagerly. 

“Yes.” 

“Where?” he almost called aloud in 
his anxiety. 

“Well,” Ingram said slowly, “she is 
in London, and she is very well; and 
you need have no anxiety about her.” 

“But where is she?” demanded Lav- 
ender, taking no heed of the waiter who 
was standing by and uncorking a bottle. 

“ I promised her not to tell you.” 

“You have spoken with her, then ?” 

“Yes.” 

"What did she say ? Where has she 
been ? Good Heavens, Ingram ! you 
don’t mean to say you are going to keep 
it a secret ?” 

“ Oh no,” said the other : “ I will tell 
you everything she said to me, if you 
like. Only I will not tell you where she 
is.” 

“I will not ask you,” said Lavender 
at once, “if she does not wish me to 
know. But you can tell me about her- 
self. What did she say ? What was 
she looking like ? Is Mairi with her ?” 

‘Yes, Mairi is with her. And of 


course she is looking a little troubled 
and pale, and so forth ; but she is very 
well, I should think, and quite comfort- 
ably situated. She said I was to tell you 
that she was well, and that you need not 
be anxious.” 

“She sent a message to me ?” 

“That is it.” 

“ By Jove, Ingram ! how can I ever 
thank you enough ? I feel as glad just 
now as if she had really come home 
again. And how did you manage it ?” 

Lavender, in his excitement and grat- 
itude, kept filling up his friend’s glass 
the moment the least quantity had been 
taken out of it : the wonder was he did 
not fill all the glasses on that side of the 
table, and beseech Ingram to have two 
or three dinners all at once. 

“ Oh, you needn’t give me any credit 
about it,” Ingram said. “I stumbled 
against her by accident : at least, I did 
not find her out myself.” 

“ Did she send for you ?” 

“ No. But look here, Lavender, this 
sort of cross-examination will lead to 
but one thing; and you say yourself 
you won’t try to find out where she is.” 

“Not from you, any way. But how 
can I help wanting to know where she 
is ? And my aunt was saying just now 
that very likely she had gone right away 
to the other end of London — to Peckham 
or some such place.” 

“You have seen Mrs. Lavender, then ?” 

“I have just come from there. The 
old heathen thinks the whole affair rath- 
er a good joke; but perhaps that was 
only her way of showing her temper, for 
she was in a bit of a rage, to be sure. 
And so Sheila sent me that message ?” 

“Yes.” 

“ Does she want money ? Would you 
take her some money from me ?” he said 
eagerly. Any bond of union between 
him and Sheila would be of some value. 

“ I don’t think she needs money ; and 
in any case I know she wouldn’t take it 
from you.” 

“Well, now, Ingram, you have seen 
her and talked with her, what do you 
think she intends to do ? What do you 
think she would have me do ?” 

“ These are very dangerous questions 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


209 


for me to answer,” Ingram said. “I 
don’t see how you can expect me to as- 
sume the responsibility.” 

‘‘I don’t ask you to do that at all. 
But I never found your advice to fail. 
And if you give me any hint as to what 
I should do, I will do it on my own re- 
sponsibility.” 

‘‘Then I won’t. But this I will do: 

I will tell you as nearly as ever I can 
what she said, and you can judge for 
yourself.” 

Very cautiously indeed did Ingram 
set out on this perilous undertaking. It 
was no easy matter so to shut out all ref- 
erences to Sheila’s surroundings that no 
hint should be given to this anxious lis- 
tener as to her whereabouts. But In- 
gram got through it successfully ; and 
when he had finished Lavender sat some 
time in silence, merely toying with his 
knife, for indeed he had eaten nothing. 
“ If it is her wish,” he said slowly, “ that 
I should not go to see her, I will not try 
to do so. But I should like to know 
where she is. You say she is comfort- 
; able, and she has Mairi for a companion ; 

! and that is something. In the mean 
j time, I suppose I must wait.” 

‘‘I don’t see, myself, how waiting is 
likely to do much good,” said Ingram. 
“ That won’t alter your relations much.” 

‘‘It may alter her determination. A 
woman is sure to soften into charity and 
forgiveness : she can’t help it.” 

“ If you were to ask Sheila now, she 
would say she had forgiven you already. 
But that is a different matter from getting 
her to resume her former method of life 
with you. To tell you the truth, I should 
strongly advise her, if I were to give ad- 
vice at all, not to attempt anything of 
the sort. One failure is bad enough, and 
has wrought sufficient trouble.” 

“Then what am I to do, Ingram ?” 

“You must judge for yourself what is 
J the most likely way of winning back 
Sheila’s confidence in you, and the most 
i likely conditions under which she might 
be induced to join you again. You need 
not expect to get her back into that 
! square, I should fancy : that experiment 
has rather broken down.” 

“Well,” said Lavender, “I sha’n’t 


bore you any more just now about my 
affairs. Look after your dinner, old fel- 
low : your starving yourself won’t help 
me much.” 

“ I don’t mean to starve myself at all,” 
said Ingram, steadily making his way 
through the abundant dishes his friend 
had ordered. “ But I had a very good 
luncheon this morning with — ” 

“ With Sheila,” Lavender said quickly. 

“Yes. Does it surprise you to find 
that she is in a place where she can get 
food ? I wish the poor child had made 
better use of her opportunities.” 

“Ingram,” he said after a minute, 
“could you take some money from me, 
without her knowing of it, and try to get 
her some of the little things she likes — 
some delicacies, you know : they might 
be smuggled in, as it were, without her 
knowing who had paid for them ? There 
was ice-pudding, you know, with straw- 
berries in it, that she was fond of — ” 

“ My dear fellow, a woman in her po- 
sition thinks of something else than ice- 
pudding in strawberries.” 

“ But why shouldn’t she have it all the 
same ? I would give twenty pounds to 
get some little gratification of that sort 
conveyed to her ; and if you could try, 
Ingram — ■” 

“My dear fellow, she has got every- 
thing she can want : there was no ice- 
pudding at luncheon, but doubtless there 
will be at dinner.” 

So Sheila was staying in a house in 
which ices could be prepared ? Laven- 
der’s suggestion had had no cunning 
intention in it, but here was an obvious 
piece of information. She was in no 
humble lodging-house, then. She was 
. cither staying with some friends — and 
she had no friends but Lavender’s friends 
— or she was staying at a hotel. He re- 
membered that she had once dined at 
the Langham, Mrs. Kavanagh having 
persuaded her to go to meet some Amer- 
ican visitors. Might she have gone 
thither ? 

Lavender was somewhat silent dur- 
ing the rest of that meal, for he was 
thinking of other things besides the mere 
question as to where Sheila might be 
staying. He was trying to imagine what 


210 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


she might have felt before she was driven 
to this step. He was trying to recall all 
manner of incidents of their daily life 
that he now saw might have appeared 
to her in a very different light from that 
in which he saw them. He was won- 
dering, too, how all this could be alter- 
ed, and a new life begun for them both, 
if that were still possible. 

They had gone up stairs into the 
smoking-room when a card was brought 
to Lavender. 

“Young Mosenberg is below,” he said 
to Ingram. “ He will be a livelier com- 
panion for you than I could be. Waiter, 
ask this gentleman to come up.” 

The handsome Jew-boy came eagerly 
into the room, with much excitement vis- 
ible on his face. 

“Oh, do you know,” he said to Lav- 
ender, “I have found out where Mrs. 
Lavender is — yes ? She is at your aunt’s 
house. I saw her this afternoon for one 
moment — ” He stopped, for he saw by 
the vexation on Ingram’s face that he 
had done something wrong. "Is it a 
mistake ?” he said. “ Is it a secret ?” 

“ It is not likely to be a secret if you 
have got hold of it,” said Ingram sharply. 

“I am very sorry,” said the boy. “I 
thought you were all anxious to know — ” 

“ It does not matter in the least,” said 
Lavender quietly to both of them. “ I 
shall not seek to disturb her. I am 
about to leave London.” 

“ Where are you going ?” said the boy. 

“ I don’t know yet.” 

That, at least, had been part of the 
result of his meditations; and Ingram, 
looking at him, wondered whether he 
meant to go away without trying to say 
one word to Sheila. 

“Look here, Lavender,” he said, “you 
must not fancy we were trying to play 
any useless and impertinent trick. To- 
morrow or next day Sheila will leave 
your aunt’s house, and then I should 
have told you that she had been there, 
and how the old lady received her. It 
was Sheila’s own wish that the lodgings 
she is going to should not be known. 
She fancies that would save both of you 
a great deal of unnecessary and fruitless 
pain, do you see? That really is her 


only object in wishing to have any con- 
cealment about the matter.” 

“But there is no need for any such 
concealment,” he said. “You may tell 
Sheila that if she likes to stay on with 
my aunt, so much the better ; and I take 
it very kind of her that she went there, 
instead of going home or to a strange 
house.” 

“Am I to tell her that you mean to 
leave London ?” 

“Yes.” 

They went into the billiard - room. 
Mosenberg was not permitted to play, 
as he had not dined in the club, but 
Ingram and Lavender proceeded to have 
a game, the former being content to ac- 
cept something like thirty in a hundred. 
It was speedily very clear that Laven- 
der’s heart was not in the contest. He 
kept forgetting which ball he had been 
playing, missing easy shots, playing a 
perversely wrong game, and so forth. 
And yet his spirits were not much down- 
cast. 

“ Is Peter Hewetson still at Tarbert, 
do you know ?” he asked of Ingram. 

“ I believe so. I heard of him lately. 
He and one or two more are there.” 

“ I suppose you’ll look in on them if 
you go North ?” 

“ Certainly. The place is badly per- 
fumed, but picturesque, and there is 
generally plenty of whisky about.” 

“When do you go North ?'* 

“I don’t know. In a w*eek or two.” 

That was all that Lavender hinted of 
his plans. He went home early that 
night, and spent an hour or two in pack- 
ing up some things, and in writing a 
long letter to his aunt, which was des- 
tined considerably to astonish that lady. 
Then he lay down and had a few hours’ 
rest. 

In the early morning he went out and 
walked across Kensington Gardens down 
to the Gore. He wished to have one 
look at the house in which Sheila was, 
or perhaps he might, from a distance, 
see her come out on a simple errand ? 
He knew, for example, that she had a 
superstitious liking for posting her letters 
herself : in wet weather or dry she in- 
variably carried her own correspondence 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


to the nearest pillar-post. Perhaps he 
might have one glimpse of her face, to 
see how she was looking, before he left 
London. 

There were few people about : one or 
two well-known lawyers and merchants 
were riding by to have their morning 
canter in the Park ; the shops were being 
opened. Over there was the house — 
with its dark front of bricks, its hard 
ivy, and its small windows with formal 
red curtains — in which Sheila was im- 
mured. That was certainly not the pal- 
ace that a beautiful sea-princess should 
have inhabited. Where were the pine 
woods around it, and the lofty hills, and 
the wild beating of the waves on the 
sands below ? And now it seemed 
strange and sad that just as he was about 
to go away to the North, and breathe 
the salt air again, and find the strong 
west winds blowing across the mountain- 
peaks and through the furze, Sheila, a 
daughter of the sea and the rocks, should 
be hiding herself in obscure lodgings in 
the heart of a great city. Perhaps — he 
could not but think at this time — if he 
had only the chance of speaking to her 
for a couple of moments, he could per- 
suade her to forgive him everything that 


had happened, and go away with him 
— away from London and all the asso- 
ciations that had vexed her and almost 
broken her heart — to the free and open 
and joyous life on the far sea-coasts of 
the Hebrides. 

Something caused him to turn his 
head for a second, and he knew that 
Sheila was coming along the pavement 
— not from, but toward the house. It 
was too late to think of getting out of 
her way, and yet he dared not go up to 
her and speak to her, as he had wished 
to do. She, too, had seen him. There 
was a quick, frightened look in her eyes, 
and then she came along, with her face 
pale and her head downcast. He did 
not seek to interrupt her. His eyes too 
were lowered as she passed him without 
taking any notice of his presence, al- 
though the sad face and the troubled 
lips told of the pain at her heart. He 
had hoped, perchance, for one word, for 
even a sign of recognition, but she went 
by him calmly, gravely and silently. 
She went into the house, and he turned 
away with a weight at his heart, as 
though the gates of heaven had been 
closed against him. 



PA R 

CHAPTER XXII. 

“LIKE HADRIANUS AND AUGUSTUS.” 

T HE island of Borva lay warm and 
green and bright under a blue sky ; 
there were no white curls of foam on 
Loch Roag, but only the long Atlantic 
swell coming in to fall on the white 
beach ; away over there in the south the 
fine grays and purples of the giant Sua- 
inabhal shone in the sunlight amid the 
clear air ; and the beautiful sea-pyots 
flew about the rocks, their screaming 
being the only sound audible in the 
stillness. The King of Borva was down 
by the shore, seated on a stool, and en- 
gaged in the idyllic operation of paint- 
ing a boat which had been hauled up on 
the sand. It was the Maighdean-mhara. 
He would let no one else on the island 
touch Sheila’s boat. Duncan, it is true, 
was permitted to keep her masts and 
sails and seats sound and white, but as 
for the decorative painting of the small 
craft — including a little bit of amateur 
gilding — that was the exclusive right of 
Mr. Mackenzie himself. For of course, 
the old man said to himself, Sheila was 
coming back to Borva one of these days, 
and she would be proud to find her own 
boat bright and sound. If she and her 
husband should resolve to spend half 
the year in Stornoway, would not the 
small craft be of use to her there ? and 
sure he was that a prettier little vessel 
never entered Stornoway Bay. Mr. 
Mackenzie was at this moment engaged 
in putting a thin line of green round the 
white bulwarks that might have been 
distinguished across Loch Roag, so keen 
and pure was the color. 

A much heavier boat, broad-beamed, 
red-hulled and brown-sailed, was slowly 
coming round the point at this moment. 
Mr. Mackenzie raised his eyes from his 
work, and knew that Duncan was com- 
ing back from Callernish. Some few 
minutes thereafter the boat was run in 
to her moorings, and Duncan came along 


T X. 

the beach with a parcel in his hancC 
“Here wass your letters, sir,” he said. 
“And there iss one of them will be from 
Miss Sheila, if I wass make no mistake.” 

He remained there. Duncan general- 
ly knew pretty well when a letter from 
Sheila was among the documents he had 
to deliver, and on such an occasion he 
invariably lingered about to hear the 
news, which was immediately spread 
abroad throughout the island. The old 
King of Borva was not a garrulous man, 
but he was glad that the people about 
him should know that his Sheila had 
become a fine lady in the South, and 
saw fine things and went among fine 
people. Perhaps this notion of his was 
a sort of apology to them — perhaps it 
was an apology to himself— for his hav- 
ing let her go away from the island ; but 
at all events the simple folks about Borva 
knew that Miss Sheila, as they still in- 
variably called her, lived in the same 
town as the queen herself, and saw many 
lords and ladies, and was present at 
great festivities, as became Mr. Mac- 
kenzie’s only daughter. And naturally 
these rumors and stories were exagger- 
ated by the kindly interest and affection 
of the people into something far beyond 
what Sheila’s father intended ; insomuch 
that many an old crone would proudly 
and sagaciously wag her head, and say 
that when Miss Sheila came back to 
Borva strange things might be seen, and 
it would be a proud day for Mr. Mac- 
kenzie if he was to go down to the shore 
to meet Queen Victoria herself, and the 
princes and princesses, and many fine 
people, all come to stay at his house and 
have great rejoicings in Borva. 

Thus it was that Duncan invariably 
lingered about when he brought a letter 
from Sheila ; and if her father happen- 
ed to forget or be preoccupied, Duncan 
would humbly but firmly remind him. 
On this occasion Mr. Mackenzie put 
down his paint-brush and took the bun- 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


213 


die of letters and newspapers Duncan 
had brought him. He selected that from 
Sheila, and threw the others on the beach 
beside him. 

There was really no news in the letter. 
Sheila merely said that she could not as 
yet answer her father’s question as to 
the time she might probably visit Lewis. 
She hoped he was well, and that, if she 
could not get up to Borva that autumn, 
he would come South to London for a 
time, when the hard weather set in in 
the North. And so forth. But there 
was something in the tone of the letter 
that struck the old man as being unusual 
and strange. It was very formal in its 
phraseology. He read it twice over 
very carefully, and forgot altogether that 
Duncan was waiting. Indeed, he was 
going to turn away, forgetting his work 
and the other letters that still lay on the 
beach, when he observed that there was 
a postscript on the other side of the last 
page. It merely said : “Will you please 
address your letters now to No. — Pem- 
broke road, South Kensington, where I 
may be for some time ?” 

That was an imprudent postscript. If 
she had shown the letter to any one, she 
would have been warned of the blunder 
she was committing. But the child had 
not much cunning, and wrote and post- 
ed the letter in the belief that her father 
would simply do as she asked him, and 
suspect nothing and ask no questions. 

When old Mackenzie read that post- 
script he could only stare at the paper 
before him. 

“ Will there be anything wrong, sir ?” 
said the tall keeper, whose keen gray 
eyes had been fixed on his master’s face. 

The sound of Duncan’s voice startled 
and recalled Mr. Mackenzie, who imme- 
diately turned, and said lightly, “ Wrong ? 
What wass you thinking would be 
wrong? Oh, there is nothing wrong 
whatever. But Mairi, she will be great- 
ly surprised, and she is going to write no 
letters until she comes back to tell you 
what she has seen : that is the message 
there will be for Scarlett. Sheila — she 
is very well.’’ 

Duncan picked up the other letters 
and newspapers. 


“You may tek them to the house, 
Duncan,” said Mr. Mackenzie ; and then 
he added carelessly, “Did you hear 
when the steamer was thinking of leav- 
ing Stornoway this night ?” 

“ They were saying it would be seven 
o’clock or six, as there was a great deal 
of cargo to go on her.” 

“ Six o’clock ? I’m thinking, Duncan, 
I would like to go with her as far as 
Oban or Glasgow. Oh yes, I will go 
with her as far as Glasgow. Be sharp, 
Duncan, and bring in the boat.” 

The keeper stared, fearing his master 
had gone mad : “You wass going with 
her this ferry night ?” 

“Yes. Be sharp, Duncan !” said Mac- 
kenzie, doing his best to conceal his im- 
patience and determination under a care- 
less air. 

“Bit, sir, you canna do it,” said Dun- 
can peevishly. “You hef no things 
looked out to go. And by the time we 
would get to Callernish it wass a ferry 
hard drive there will be to get to Stor- 
noway by six o’clock ; and there is the 
mare, sir, she will hef lost a shoe — ” 

Mr. Mackenzie’s diplomacy gave way. 
He turned upon the keeper with a sud- 
den fierceness and with a stamp of his 
foot : “ you, Duncan MacDon- 

ald ! is it you or me that is the master ? 
I will go to Stornoway this ferry moment 
if I hef to buy twenty horses !” And 
there was a light under the shaggy eye- 
brows that warned Duncan to have done 
with his remonstrances. 

“Oh, ferry well, sir — ferry well,. sir,” 
he said, going off to the boat, and grum- 
bling as he went. “If Miss Sheila was 
here, it would be no going away to 
Glesca without any things wis you, as if 
you wass a poor traffelin tailor that hass 
nothing in the world but a needle and a 
thimble mirover. And what will the 
people in Styornoway hef to say, and sa 
captain of sa steamboat, and Scarlett? 
I will hef no peace from Scarlett if you 
wass going away like this. And as for 
sa sweerin, it is no use sa sweerin, for I 
will get sa boat ready — oh yes, I will get 
sa boat ready ; but I do not understand 
why I will get sa boat ready.” 

By this time, indeed, he had got along 


214 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


to the larger boat, and his grumblings 
were inaudible to the object of them. 
Mr. Mackenzie went to the small land- 
ing-place and waited. When he got 
into the boat and sat down in the stern, 
taking the tiller in his right hand, he 
still held Sheila’s letter in the other 
hand, although he did not need to re- 
read it. 

They sailed out into the blue waters 
of the loch and rounded the point of the 
island in absolute silence, Duncan mean- 
while being both sulky and curious. He 
could not make out why his master 
should so suddenly leave the island, 
without informing any one, without even 
taking with him that tall and roughly- 
furred black hat which he sometimes 
wore on important occasions. Yet there 
was a letter in his hand, and it was a 
letter from Miss Sheila. Was the news 
about Mairi the only news in it ? 

Duncan kept looking ahead to see 
that the boat was steering her right 
course for the Narrows, and was anx- 
ious, now that he had started, to make 
the voyage in the least possible time, but 
all the same his eyes would come back 
to Mr. Mackenzie, who sat very much 
absorbed, steering almost mechanically, 
seldom looking ahead, but instinctively 
guessing his course by the outlines of 
the shore close by. “Was there any 
bad news, sir, from Miss Sheila?’’ he 
was compelled to say at last. 

“Miss Sheila!’’ said Mr. Mackenzie 
impatiently. “Is it an infant you are, 
that you will call a married woman by 
such a name ?’’ 

Duncan had never been checked be- 
fore for a habit which was common to 
the whole island of Borva. 

“There iss no bad news,” continued 
Mackenzie impatiently. “Is it a story 
you would like to tek back to the people 
of Borvabost ?” 

“ It wass no thought of such a thing 
wass come into my head, sir,” said Dun- 
can. “There iss no one in sa island 
would like to carry bad news about Miss 
Sheila ; and there iss no one in sa island 
would like to hear it — not any one what- 
ever — and I can answer for that.” 

“ Then hold your tongue about it. 


There is no bad news from Sheila,” said 
Mackenzie ; and Duncan relapsed into 
silence, not very well content. 

By dint of very hard driving indeed 
Mr. Mackenzie just caught the boat as 
she was leaving Stornoway harbor, the 
hurry he was in fortunately saving him 
from the curiosity and inquiries of the 
people he knew on the pier. As for the 
frank and good-natured captain, he did 
not show that excessive interest in Mr. 
Mackenzie’s affairs that Duncan had 
feared ; but when the steamer was well 
away from the coast and bearing down 
on her route to Skye, he came and had 
a chat with the King of Borva about the 
condition of affairs on the west of the 
island; and he was good enough to ask, 
too, about the young lady that had mar- 
ried the English gentleman. Mr. Mac- 
kenzie said briefly that she was very 
well, and returned to the subject of the 
fishing. 

It was on a wet and dreary morning 
that Mr. Mackenzie arrived in London ; 
and as he was slowly driven through 
the long and dismal thoroughfares with 
their gray and melancholy houses, their 
passers-by under umbrellas, and their 
smoke and drizzle and dirt, he could not 
help saying to himself, “ My poor Shei- 
la !” It was not a pleasant place surely 
to live in always, although it might be 
all very well for a visit. Indeed, this 
cheerless day added to the gloomy fore- 
bodings in his mind, and it needed all 
his resolve and his pride in his own 
diplomacy to carry out his plan of ap- 
proaching Sheila. 

When he got down to Pembroke road 
he stopped the cab at the corner and 
paid the man. Then he walked along 
the thoroughfare, having a look at the 
houses. At length he came to the num- 
ber mentioned in Sheila’s letter, and he 
found that there was a brass plate on 
the door bearing an unfamiliar name. 
His suspicions were confirmed. 

He went up the steps and knocked : 
a small girl answered the summons. “ Is 
Mrs. Lavender living here ?” he said. 

She looked for a moment with some 
surprise at the short, thick-set man, with 
his sailor costume, his peaked cap, and 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


215 


liis voluminous gray beard and shaggy 
eyebrows; and then she said that she 
would ask, and what was his name ? 
13ut Mr. Mackenzie was too sharp not to 
know what that meant. 

“ I am her father. It will do ferry well 
if you will show me the room.” 

And he stepped inside. The small 
girl obediently shut the door, and then 
led the way up stairs. The next minute 
Mr. Mackenzie had entered the room, 
and there before him was Sheila bending 
over Mairi and teaching her how to do 
some fancy-work. 

The girl looked up on hearing some 
one enter, and then, when she suddenly 
saw her father there, she uttered a slight 
cry of alarm and shrunk back. If he 
had been less intent on his own plans 
he would have been amazed and pained 
by this action on the part of his daughter, 
who used to run to him, on great occa- 
sions and small, whenever she saw him ; 
but the girl had for the last few days 
been so habitually schooling herself into 
the notion that she was keeping a secret 
from him — she had become so deeply 
conscious of the concealment intended 
in that brief letter — that she instinctively 
shrank from him when he suddenly ap- 
peared. It was but for a moment. 

Mr. Mackenzie came forward with a 
fine assumption of carelessness and 
shook hands with Sheila and with Mairi, 
and said, “ How do you do, Mairi ? And 
are you ferry well, Sheila ? And you will 
not expect me this morning ; but when 
a man will not pay you what he wass' 
owing, it wass no good letting it go on 
in that way ; and I hef come to Lon- 
don — ” 

He shook the rain-drops from his cap, 
and was a little embarrassed. 

‘‘Yes, I hef come to London to have 
the account settled up ; for it wass no 
good letting him go on for effer and effer. 
Ay, and how are you, Sheila ?” 

He looked about the room : he would 
not look at her. She stood there unable 
to speak, and with her face grown wild 
and pale. 

‘‘Ay, it wass raining hard all the last 
night, and there wass a good deal of 
water came into the carriage ; and it is 


a ferry hard bed you will make of a 
third-class carriage. Ay, it wass so. 
And this is a new house you will hef, 
Sheila?” 

She had been coming nearer to him, 
with her face down and the speechless 
lips trembling. And then suddenly, 
with a strange sob, she threw herself 
into his arms and hid her head, and 
burst into a wild fit of crying. 

‘‘Sheila,” he said, ‘‘what ails you? 
What iss all the matter ?” 

Mairi had covertly got out of the 
room. 

‘‘Oh, papa, I have left him,” the girl 
cried. 

‘‘Ay,” said her father quite cheerfully 
— “ oh ay, I thought there was some little 
thing wrong when your letter wass come 
to us the other day. But it is no use 
making a great deal of trouble about it, 
Sheila, for it is easy to have all those 
things put right again — oh yes, ferry 
easy. And you have left your own 
home, Sheila ? And where is Mr. Lav- 
ender ?” 

44 Oh, papa,” she cried, ‘‘you must not 
try to see him. You must promise not 
to go to see him. I should have told 
you everything when I wrote, but I 
thought you would come up and blame 
it all on him, and I think it is I who am 
to blame.” 

“ But I do not want to blame any one,” 
said her father. “You must not make 
so much of these things, Sheila. It is 
a pity — yes, it is a ferry great pity — 
your husband and you will hef a quarrel ; 
but it iss no uncommon thing for these 
troubles to happen ; and I am coming 
to you this morning, not to make any 
more trouble, but to see if it cannot be 
put right again. And I do not want to 
know any more than that, and I will 
not blame any one ; but if I wass to see 
Mr. Lavender — ” 

A bitter anger had filled his heart from 
the moment he had learned how matters 
stood, and yet he was talking in such 
a bland, matter-of-fact, almost cheerful 
fashion that his own daughter was im- 
posed upon, and began to grow comfort- 
ed. The mere fact that her father now 
knew of all her troubles, and was not 


2l6 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


disposed to take a very gloomy view of 
them, was of itself a great relief to her. 
And she was greatly pleased, too, to 
hear her father talk in the same light 
and even friendly fashion of her hus- 
band. She had dreaded the possible 
results of her writing home and relating 
what had occurred. She knew the pow- 
erful passion of which this lonely old 
man was capable, and if he had come 
suddenly down South with a wild desire 
to revenge the wrongs of his daughter, 
what might not have happened ? 

Sheila sat down, and with averted 
eyes told her father the whole story, in- 
genuously making all possible excuses 
for her husband, and intimating strong- 
ly that the more she looked over the his- 
tory of the past time the more she was 
convinced that she was herself to blame. 
It was but natural that Mr. Lavender 
should like to live in the manner to 
which he had been accustomed. She 
had tried to live that way too, and the 
failure to do so was surely her fault. He 
had been very kind to her. He was 
always buying her new dresses, jewelry, 
and what not, and was always pleased 
to take her to be amused anywhere. All 
this she said, and a great deal more ; 
and although Mr. Mackenzie did not 
believe the half of it, he did not say so. 

“Ay, ay, Sheila,” he said, cheerfully; 
“but if everything was right like that, 
what for will you be here ?” 

“But everything was not right, papa,” 
the girl said, still with her eyes cast down. 
“I could not live any longer like that, 
and I had to come away. That is my 
fault, and I could not help it. And there 
was a — a misunderstanding between us 
about Mairi’s visit — for I had said noth- 
ing about it — and he was surprised — and 
he had some friends coming to see us 
that day — ” 

“Oh, well, there iss no great harm 
done — none at all,” said her father light- 
ly, and perhaps beginning to think that 
after all something was to be said for 
Lavender’s side of the question. “ And 
you will not suppose, Sheila, that I am 
coming to make any trouble by quarrel- 
ing with any one. There are some men 
— oh yes, there are ferry many — that 


would have no judgment at such a 
time, and they would think only about 
their daughter, and hef no regard for 
any one else, and they would only make 
effery one angrier than before. But you 
will tell me, Sheila, where Mr. Lavender 
is.” 

“I do not know,” she said. “And I 
am anxious, papa, you should not go to 
see him. I have asked you to promise 
that to please me.” 

He hesitated. There were not many 
things he could refuse his daughter, but 
he was not sure he ought to yield to her 
in this. For were not these two a couple 
of foolish young things, who wanted an 
experienced and cool and shrewd person 
to come with a little dexterous manage- 
ment and arrange their affairs for them ? 

“ I do not think I have half explained 
the difference between us,” said Sheila 
in the same low voice. “ It is no passing" 
quarrel, to be mended up and forgotten : 
it is nothing like that. You must leave 
it alone, papa.” 

“That is foolishness, Sheila,” said the 
old man with a little impatience. “You 
are making big things out of ferry little, 
and you will only bring trouble to your- 
self. How do you know but that he 
wishes to hef all this misunderstanding 
removed, and hef you go back to hiin-?” 

“ I know that he wishes that,” she said 
calmly. 

“And you speak as if you wass in 
great trouble here, and yet you will not 
go back ?” he said in great surprise. 

“Yes, that is so,” she said. “There 
is no use in my going back to the same 
sort of life : it was not happiness for 
either of us, and to me it was misery. 
If I am to blame for it, that is only a 
misfortune.” 

“But if you will not go back to him, 
Sheila,” her father said, “at least you 
will go back with me to Borva.” 

“1 cannot do that, either,” said the 
girl with the same quiet yet decisive 
manner. 

Mr. Mackenzie rose with an impatient 
gesture and walked to the window. He 
did not know what to say. He was 
very well aware that when Sheila had 
resolved upon anything, she had thought 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


217 


it well over beforehand, and was not 
likely to change her mind. And yet the 
notion of his daughter living in lodgings 
in a strange town — her only companion 
a young girl who had never been in the 
place before— was vexatiously absurd. 

“Sheila,” he said, “you will come to a 
better understanding about that. I sup % 
pose you wass afraid the people would 
wonder at you coming back alone. But 
they will know nothing about it. Mairi 
she is a very good lass : she will do any- 
thing you will ask of her : you hef no 
need to think she will carry stories. And 
every one wass thinking you will be 
coming to the Lewis this year, and it is 
ferry glad they will be to see you ; and 
if the house at Borvabost hass not 
enough amusement for you after you 
hef been in a big town like this, you 
will live in Stornoway with some of our 
friends there, and you will come over to 
Borva when you please.” 

“ If I went up to the Lewis,” said 
Sheila, “ do you think I could live any- 
where but in Borva? It is not any 
amusements I will be thinking about. 
But I cannot go back to the Lewis 
alone.” 

Her father saw how the pride of the 
girl had driven her to this decision, and 
saw, too, how useless it was for him to 
reason with her just at the present mo- 
ment. Still, there was plenty of occa- 
sion here for the use of a little diplomacy 
merely to smooth the way for the recon- 
ciliation of husband and wife ; and Mr. 
Mackenzie concluded in his own mind 
that it was far from being injudicious to 
allow Sheila to convince herself that she 
bore part of the blame of this separation. 
For example, he now proposed that the 
discussion of the whole question should 
be postponed for the present, and that 
Sheila should take him about London 
and show him all that she had learned ; 
and he suggested that they should then 
and there get a hansom cab and drive 
to some exhibition or other. 

“A hansom, papa?” said Sheila. 
“Mairi must go with us, you know.” 

This was precisely what he had an- 
gled for, and he said, with a show of im- 
patience, “Mairi! How can we take 


about Mairi to every place ? Mairi is a 
ferry good lass— oh yes— but she is a 
servant-lass.” 

The words nearly stuck in his throat ; 
and indeed had any other addressed 
such a phrase to one of his kith and kin 
there would have been an explosion of 
rage ; but now he was determined to 
show to Sheila that her husband had 
some cause for objecting to this girl sit- 
ting down with his friends. 

But neither husband nor father could 
make Sheila forswear allegiance to what 
her own heart told her was just and 
honorable and generous; and indeed 
her father at this moment was not dis- 
pleased to see her turn round on himself 
with just a touch of indignation in her 
voice. “ Mairi is my guest, papa,” she 
said. “ It is not like you to think of 
leaving her at home.” 

“Oh, it wass of no consequence,” 
said old Mackenzie carelessly : indeed 
he was not sorry to have met with this 
rebuff. “ Mairi is a ferry good girl — oh 
yes — but there are many who would not 
forget she is a servant-lass, and would 
not like to be always taking her with 
them. And you hef lived a long time 
in London — ” 

“I have not lived long enough in 
London to make me forget my friends 
or insult them,” Sheila said with proud 
lips, and yet turning to the window to 
hide her face. 

“ My lass, I did not mean any harm 
whatever,” her father said gently: “I 
wass saying nothing against Mairi. Go 
away and bring her into the room, Sheila, 
and we will see what we can do now, 
and if there is a theatre we can go to 
this evening. And I must go out, too, 
to buy some things ; for you are a ferry 
fine lady now, Sheila, and I was coming 
away in such a hurry — ” 

“Where is your luggage, papa ?” she 
said suddenly. 

“Oh, luggage !” said Mackenzie, look- 
ing round in great embarrassment. “ It 
was luggage you said, Sheila ? Ay, well, 
it wass a hurry I wass in when I came 
away — for this man he will have to pay 
me at once whatever — and there wass 
no time for any luggage — oh no, there 


218 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


wass no time, because Duncan he wass 
late with the boat, and the mare she had 
a shoe to put on — and — and — oh no, there 
was no time for any luggage.” 

44 But what was Scarlett about, to let 
you come away like that ?” Sheila said. 

44 Scarlett ? W ell, Scarlett did not know, 
it was all in silch a hurry. Now go and 
bring in Mairi, Sheila, and we will speak 
about the theatre.” 

But there was to be no theatre for any 
of them that evening. Sheila was just 
about to leave the room to summon Mairi 
when the small girl who had let Mac- 
kenzie into the house appeared and said, 
44 Please, m’m, there is a young woman 
below who wishes to see you. She has 
a message to you from Mrs. Paterson.” 

‘‘Mrs. Paterson?” Sheila said, won- 
dering how Mrs. Lavender’s hench- wo- 
man should have been entrusted with 
any such commission. “Will you ask 
her to come up ?” 

The girl came up stairs, looking rather 
frightened and much out of breath. 

“Please, m’m, Mrs. Paterson has sent 
me to tell you, and would you please 
come as soon as it is convenient ? Mrs. 
Lavender has died. It was quite sudden 
— only she recovered a little after the fit, 
and then sank : the doctor is there now, 
but he wasn’t in time, it was all so sud- 
den. Will you please come round, m’m ?” 

“Yes — I shall be there directly,” said 
Sheila, too bewildered and stunned to 
think of the possibility of meeting her 
husband there. 

The girl left, and Sheila still stood in 
the middle of the room apparently stupe- 
fied. That old woman had got into such 
a habit of talking about her approaching 
death that Sheila had ceased to believe 
her, and had grown to fancy that these 
morbid speculations were indulged in 
chiefly for the sake of shocking bystand- 
ers. But a dead man or a dead woman 
is suddenly invested with a great solem- 
nity ; and Sheila with a pang of remorse 
thought of the fashion in which she had 
suspected this old woman of a godless 
hypocrisy. She felt, too, that she had 
unjustly disliked Mrs. Lavender — that 
she had feared to go near her ; and blamed 
her unfairly for many things that had 


happened. In her own way that old 
woman in Kensington Gore had been 
kind to her : perhaps the girl was a little 
ashamed of herself at this moment that 
she did not cry. 

Her father went out with her, and up 
to the house with the dusty ivy and the 
red curtains. How strangely like was 
the aspect of the house inside to the very 
picture that Mrs. Lavender had herself 
drawn of her death ! Sheila could re- 
member all the ghastly details that the 
old woman seemed to have a malicious 
delight in describing; and here they 
were — the shutters drawn down, the 
servants walking about on tiptoe, the 
strange silence in one particular room. 
The little shriveled old body lay quite 
still and calm now ; and yet as Sheila 
went to the bedside, she could hardly 
believe that within that forehead there 
was not some consciousness of the scene 
around. Lying almost in the same po- 
sition, the old woman, with a sardonic 
smile on her face, had spoken of the 
time when she should be speechless, 
sightless and deaf, while Paterson would 
go about stealthily as if she was afraid 
the corpse would hear. Was it possible 
to believe that the dead body was not 
conscious at this moment that Paterson 
was really going about in that fashion — 
that the blinds were down, friends stand- 
ing some little distance from the bed, a 
couple of doctors talking to each other 
in the passage outside ? 

They went into another room, and 
then Sheila, with a sudden shiver, re- 
membered that soon her husband would 
be coming, and might meet her and her 
father there. 

“You have sent for Mr. Lavender?” 
she said calmly to Mrs. Paterson. 

“No, ma’am,” Paterson said with more 
than her ordinary gravity and formality : 
44 1 did not know where to send for him. 
He left London some days ago. Per- 
haps you would read the letter, ma’am.” 

She offered Sheila an open letter. The 
girl saw that it was in her husband’s 
handwriting, but she shrank from it as 
though she were violating the secrets of 
the grave. 

44 Oh no,” she said, 44 1 cannot do that.” 


A PRINCESS 


OF THULE . 


“Mrs. Lavender, ma’am, meant you 
to read it, after she had had her will 
altered. She told me so. It is a very 
sad thing, ma’am, that she did not live 
to carry out her intentions ; for she has 
been inquiring, ma’am, these last few 
days as to how she could leave every- 
thing to you, ma’am, which she intend- 
ed ; and now the other will — ” 

“ Oh, don’t talk about that !” said 
Sheila. It seemed to her that the dead 
body in the other room would be laugh- 
ing hideously, if only it could, at this 
fulfillment of all the sardonic prophecies 
that Mrs. Lavender used to make. 

“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” Pater- 
son said in the same formal way, as if 
she were a machine set to work in a 
particular direction, “I only mentioned 
the will to explain why Mrs. Lavender 
wished you to read this letter.” 

“ Read the letter, Sheila,” said her 
father. 

The girl took it and carried it to the 
window. While she was there, old Mac- 
kenzie, who had fewer scruples about 
such matters, and who had the curiosity 
natural to a man of the world, said to 
Mrs. Paterson — not loud enough for 
Sheila to overhear — " I suppose, then, 
the poor old lady has left her property 
to her nephew ?” 

“ Oh no, sir,” said Mrs. Paterson, 
somewhat sadly, for she fancied she was 
the bearer of bad news. “She had a 
will drawn out only a short time ago, 
and nearly everything is left to Mr. In- 
gram.” 

‘‘To Mr. Ingram ?” 

‘‘Yes,” said the woman, amazed to 
see that Mackenzie’s face, so far from 
evincing displeasure, seemed to be as 
delighted as it was surprised. 

“Yes, sir,” said Mrs. Paterson: “I 
v r as one of the witnesses. But Mrs. 
Lavender changed her mind, and was 
very anxious that everything should go 
to your daughter, if it could be done ; 
and Mr. Appleyard, sir, was to come 
here to-morrow forenoon.” 

“ And has Mr. Lavender got no money 
whatever?” said Sheila’s father, with an 
air that convinced Mrs. Paterson that he 
was a revengeful man, and was glad his 


219 

son-in-law should be so severely pun- 
ished. 

“I don’t know, sir,” she replied, care- 
ful not to go beyond her own sphere. 

Sheila came back from the window. 
She had taken a long time to read and 
ponder over that letter, though it Was 
not a lengthy one. This was what Frank 
Lavender had written to his aunt : 

“My dear Aunt Lavender: I sup- 
pose when you read this you will think 
I am in a bad temper because of what 
you said to me. It is not so. But I am 
leaving London, and I wish to hand 
over to you, before I go, the charge of 
my house, and to ask you to take pos- 
session of everything in it that does not 
belong to Sheila. These things are 
yours, as you know, and I have to thank 
you very much for the loan of them. I 
have to thank you for the far too liberal 
allowance you have made me for many 
years back. Will you think I have gone 
mad if I ask you to stop that now ? The 
fact is, I am going to have a try at earn- 
ing something, for the fun of the thing ; 
and, to make the experiment satisfactory, 
I start to-morrow morning for a district 
in the West Highlands, where the most 
ingenious fellow I know couldn’t get a 
penny loaf on credit. You have been 
very good to me, Aunt Lavender : I wish 
I had made a better use of your kind- 
ness. So good-bye just now, and if ever 
I come back to London again I shall 
call on you and thank you in person. 

“ I am your affectionate nephew, 

‘‘Frank Lavender.” 

So far the letter was almost business- 
like. There was no reference to the 
causes which were sending him away 
from London, and which had already 
driven him to this extraordinary resolu- 
tion about the money he got from his 
aunt. But at the end of the letter there 
was a brief postscript, apparently written 
at the last moment, the words of which 
were these : “ Be kind to Sheila. Be as 
kind to her as I have been cruel to her. 
In going away from her I feel as though 
I were exiled by man and forsaken by 
God.” 


220 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


She came back from the window the 
letter in her hand. 

“I think you may read it too, papa,” 
she said, for she was anxious that her 
father should know that Lavender had 
voluntarily surrendered this money be- 
fore he was deprived of it. Then she 
went back to the window. 

The slow rain fell from the dismal 
skies on the pavement and the railings 
and the now almost leafless trees. The 
atmosphere was filled with a thin white 
mist, and the people going by were hid- 
den under umbrellas. It was a dreary 
picture enough ; and yet Sheila was 
thinking of how much drearier such a 
day would be on some lonely coast in 
the North, with the hills obscured behind 
the rain, and the sea beating hopelessly 
on the sand. She thought of some small 
and damp Highland cottage, with nar- 
row windows, a smell of wet wood about, 
and the monotonous drip from over the 
door. And it seemed to her that a 
stranger there would be very lonely, not 
knowing the ways or the speech of the 
simple folk, careless perhaps of his own 
comfort, and only listening to the plash- 
ing of the sea and the incessant rain on 
the bushes and on the pebbles of the 
beach. Was there any picture of deso- 
lation, she thought, like that of a sea 
under rain, with a slight fog obscuring 
the air, and with no wind to stir the pulse 
with the noise of waves ? And if Frank 
Lavender had only gone as far as the 
Western Highlands, and was living in 
some house on the coast, how sad and 
still the Atlantic must have been all this 
wet forenoon, with the islands of Colon- 
say and Oronsay lying remote and gray 
and misty in the far and desolate plain 
of the sea ! 

“ It will take a great deal of respon- 
sibility from me, sir,” Mrs. Paterson said 
to old Mackenzie, who was absently 
thinking of all the strange possibilities 
now opening out before him, ‘‘if you 
will tell me what is to be done. Mrs. 
Lavender had no relatives in London 
except her nephew.” 

‘‘Oh yes,” said Mackenzie, waking 
up — “oh yes, we will see what is to be 
done. There will be the boat wanted 


for the funeral—” He recalled himself 
with an impatient gesture. “ Bless me!” 
he said, “ what was I saying ? You must 
ask some one 'else — you must ask Mr. 
Ingram. Hef you not sent for Mr. In- 
gram ?” 

“ Oh yes, sir, I have sent to him ; and 
he will most likely come in the after- 
noon.” 

“Then there are the executors men- 
tioned in the will — that wass something 
you should know about — and they will 
tell you what to do. As for me, it is ferry 
little I will know about such things,” 

“ Perhaps your daughter, sir,” suggest- 
ed Mrs. Paterson, “would tell me what 
she thinks should be done with the 
rooms. And as for luncheon, sir, if you 
would wait — ” 

“Oh, my daughter?” said Mr. Mac- 
kenzie, as if struck by a new idea, but 
determined all the same that Sheila 
should not have this new responsibility 
thrust on her — “My daughter? — well, 
you was saying, mem, that my daughter 
w'ould help you ? Oh yes, but she is a 
ferry young thing, and you wass saying 
we must hef luncheon ? Oh yes, but we 
will not give you so much trouble, and 
we hef luncheon ordered at the other 
house whatever ; and there is the young 
girl there that we cannot leave all by 
herself. And you hef a great experience, 
mem, and whatever you do, that will be 
right: do not have any fear of that. 
And I will come round when you want 
me — oh yes, I will come round at any 
time — but my daughter, she is a ferry 
young thing, and she would be of no use 
to you whatever — none whatever. And 
when Mr. Ingram comes you will send 
him round to the place where my daugh- 
ter is, for we will want to see him, if he 
hass the time to come. Where is Shei — 
where is my daughter?” 

Sheila had quietly left the room and 
stolen into the silent chamber in which 
the dead woman lay. They found her 
standing close by the bedside, almost in 
a trance. 

“Sheila,” said her father, taking her 
hand, “ come away now, like a good girl. 
It is no use your waiting here ; and 
Mairi — what will Mairi be doing?” 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


221 


She suffered herself to be led away, 
and they went home and had luncheon ; 
but the girl could not eat for the notion 
that somewhere or other a pair of eyes 
were looking at her, and were hideously 
laughing at her, as if to remind her of 
the prophecy of that old woman, that 
her friends would sit down to a comfort- 
able meal and begin to wonder what sort 
of mourning they would have. 

It was not until the evening that In- 
gram called. He had been greatly sur- 
prised to hear from Mrs. Paterson that 
Mr. Mackenzie had been there, along 
with his daughter ; and he now expect- 
ed to find the old King of Borva in a 
towering passion. He found him, on the 
contrary, as bland and as pleased as 
decency would admit of in view of the 
tragedy that had occurred in the morn- 
ing ; and indeed, as Mackenzie had nev- 
er seen Mrs. Lavender, there was less 
reason why he should wear the outward 
semblance of grief. Sheila’s father asked 
her to go out of the room for a little 
while ; and when she and Mairi had 
gone, he said cheerfully, “Well, Mr. In- 
gram, and it is a rich man you are at 
last.” 

“Mrs. Paterson said she had told you,” 
Ingram said with a shrug. “ You never 
expected to find me rich, did you ?” 

“Never,” said Mackenzie frankly. 
“ But it is a ferry good thing — oh yes, it 
is a ferry good thing — to hef money and 
be independent of people. And you will 
make a good use of it, I know.” 

“You don’t seem disposed, sir, to re- 
gret that Lavender has been robbed of 
what should have belonged to him ?” 

“Oh, not at all,” said Mackenzie, 
gravely and cautiously, for he did not 
want his plans to be displayed prema- 
turely. “ But I hef no quarrel with him ; 
so you will not think I am glad to hef 
the money taken away for that. Oh no : 
I hef seen a great many men and wo- 
men, and it was no strange thing that 
these two young ones, living all by them- 
selves in London, should hef a quarrel. 
But it will come all right again if we do 
not make too much about it. If they 
like one another, they will soon come 
together again, tek my word for it, Mr. 


Ingram ; and I hef seen a great many 
men and women. And as for the mon- 
ey — well, as for the money, I hef plenty 
for my Sheila, and she will not starve 
when I die — no, nor before that, either ; 
and as for the poor old woman that has 
died, I am ferry glad she left her money 
to one that will make a good use of it, 
and will not throw it away whatever.” 

“Oh, but you know, Mr. Mackenzie, 
you are congratulating me without cause. 
I must tell you how the matter stands. 
The money does not belong to me at 
all : Mrs. Lavender never intended it 
should. It was meant to go to Sheila — ” 

“Oh, I know, I know,” said Mr. 
Mackenzie with a wave of his hand. 
“I wass hearing all that from the wo- 
man at the house. But how will you 
know what Mrs. Lavender intended? 
You hef only that woman’s story of it. 
And here is the will, and you hef the 
money, and — and — ” Mackenzie hesi- 
tated for a moment, and then said with 
a sudden vehemence, “ — and, by Kott, 
you shall keep it !” 

Ingram was a trifle startled. “But 
look here, sir,” he said in a tone of ex- 
postulation, “you make a mistake. I 
myself know Mrs. Lavender’s intentions. 
I don’t go by any story of Mrs. Pater- 
son’s. Mrs. Lavender made over the 
money to me with express injunctions 
to place it at the disposal of Sheila when- 
ever I should see fit. Oh, there’s no 
mistake about it, so you need not protest, 
sir. If the money belonged to me, I 
should be delighted to keep it. No man 
in the country more desires to be rich 
than I ; so don’t fancy I am flinging 
away a fortune out of generosity. If 
any rich and kind-hearted old lady will 
send me five thousand or ten thousand 
pounds, you will see how I shall stick to 
it. But the simple truth is, this money 
is not mine at all. It was never intend- 
ed to be mine. It belongs to Sheila.” • 

Ingram talked in a very matter-of-fact 
way : the old man feared what he said 
was true. 

“Ay, it is a ferry good story,” said 
Mackenzie cautiously, “and maybe it 
is all true. And you wass saying you 
would like to hef money ?” 


222 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


“ I most decidedly should like to have 
money.” 

“ Well, then,” said the old man, watch- 
ing his friend’s face, “ there iss no one 
to say that the story is true, and who 
will believe it ? And if Sheila wass to 
come to you and say she did not believe 
it, and she would not hef the money 
from you, you would hef to keep it, eh ?” 

Ingram’s sallow face blushed crimson. 
‘‘I don’t know what you mean,” he said 
stiffly. “ Do you propose to pervert the 
girl’s mind and make me a party to a 
fraud ?” 

‘‘Oh, there is no use getting into an 
anger,” said Mackenzie suavely, “when 
common sense will do as well whatever. 
And there wass no perversion and there 
wass no fraud talked about. It wass 
just this, Mr. Ingram, that if the old 
lady’s will leaves you her property, who 
will you be getting to believe that she 
did not mean to give it to you ?” 

“ I tell you now whom she meant to 
give it to,” said Ingram, still somewhat 
hotly. 

“Oh yes — oh yes, that is ferry well. 
But who will believe it ?” 

“Good Heavens, sir ! who will believe 
I could be such a fool as to fling away 
this property if it belonged to me ?” 

“They will think you a fool to do it 
now — yes, that is sure enough,” said 
Mackenzie. 

“ I don’t care what they think. And 
it seems rather odd, Mr. Mackenzie, that 
you should be trying to deprive your 
own daughter of what belongs to her.” 

“ Oh, my daughter is ferry well off 
whatever : she does not want any one’s 
money,” said Mackenzie. And then a 
new notion struck him : “ Will you tell 
me this, Mr. Ingram ? If Mrs. Laven- 
der left you her property in this way, 
what for did she want to change her 
will, eh ?” 

“Well, to tell you the truth, I refused 
to take the responsibility. She was anx- 
ious to have this money given to Sheila, 
so that Lavender should not touch it; 
and I don’t think it was a wise intention, 
for there is not a prouder man in the 
world than Lavender, and I know that 
Sheila would not consent to hold a penny 


that did not equally belong to him. 
However, that was her notion, and I was 
the first victim of it. I protested against 
it, and I suppose that set her to inquiring 
whether the money could not be abso- 
lutely bequeathed to Sheila direct. I 
don’t know anything about it myself; 
but that’s how the matter stands, as far 
as I am concerned.” 

“But you will think it over, Mr. In- 
gram,” said Mackenzie quietly — “you 
will think it over, and be in no hurry. 
It is not every man that hass a lot of 
money given to him. And it is no 
wrong to my Sheila at all, for she will 
hef quite plenty ; and she would be ferry 
sorry to take the money away from you, 
that is sure enough ; and you will not 
be hasty, Mr. Ingram, but be cautious 
and reasonable, and you will see the 
money will do you far more good than 
it would do Sheila.” 

Ingram began to think that he had 
tied a millstone round his neck. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

IN EXILE. 

One evening in the olden time Laven- 
der and Sheila and Ingram and old 
Mackenzie were all sitting high up on 
the rocks near Borvabost, chatting to 
each other, and watching the red light 
pale on the bosom of the Atlantic as the 
sun sank behind the edge of the world. 
Ingram was smoking a wooden pipe. 
Lavender sat with Sheila’s hand in his. 
The old King of Borva was discoursing 
of the fishing populations round the west- 
ern coasts, and of their various ways and 
habits. 

“I wish I could have seen Tarbert,” 
Lavender was saying, “ but the Iona just 
passes the mouth of the little harbor as 
she comes up Loch Fyne. I know two 
or three men who go there every year to 
paint the fishing-life of the place. It is 
an odd little place, isn’t it?” 

“Tarbert ?” said Mr. Mackenzie — “ you 
wass wanting to know about Tarbert? 
Ah, well, it is getting to be a better place 
now, but a year or two ago it wass ferry 
like hell. Oh yes it wass, Sheila, so you 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


223 


need not say anything. And this wass 
the way of it, Mr. Lavender, that the 
trawling was noi made legal then, and 
the men they were just like devils, with 
the swearing and the drinking and the 
fighting that went on ; and if you went 
into the harbor in the open day, you 
would find them drunk and fighting, and 
some of them with blood on their faces, 
for it wass a ferry wild time. It wass 
many a one will say that the Tarbert- 
men would run down the police-boat 
some dark night. And what was the 
use of catching the trawlers now and 
again, and taking their boats and their 
nets to be sold at Greenock, when they 
went themselves over to Greenock to the 
auction and bought them back ? Oh, it 
was a great deal of money they made 
then : I hef heard of a crew of eight men 
getting thirty pounds each man in the 
course of one night, and that not seldom 
mirover.” 

“But why didn’t the government put 
it down ?” Lavender asked. 

“Well, you see,” Mackenzie answered 
with the air of a man well acquainted 
with the difficulties of ruling — “you see 
that it wass not quite sure that the trawl- 
ing did much harm to the fishing. And 
the Jackal — that was the government 
steamer — she was not much good in get- 
ting the better of the Tarbert-men, who 
are ferry good with their boats in the 
rowing, and are ferry cunning whatever. 
You know, the buying boats went out to 
sea, and took the herring there, and then 
the trawlers they would sink their nets 
and come home in the morning as if 
they had not caught one fish, although 
the boat would be white with the scales 
of the herring. And what is more, sir, 
the government knew ferry well that if 
trawling was put down, then there would 
be a ferry good many murders ; for the 
Tarbert-men, when they came home 
to drink whisky, and wash the whisky 
down with porter, they were ready to 
fight anybody.” 

“ It must be a delightful place to live 
in,” Lavender said. 

“Oh, but it is ferry different now,” 
Mackenzie continued — “ferry different. 
The men they are nearly all Good Tem- 

15 


plars now, and there is no drinking 
whatever, and there is reading - rooms 
and such things, and the place is ferry 
quiet and respectable.” 

“I hear,” Ingram remarked, “that 
good people attribute the change to mor- 
al suasion, and that wicked people put it 
down to want of money.” 

“ Papa, this boy will have to be put to 
bed,” Sheila said. 

“Well,” Mackenzie answered, “there 
is not so much money in the place as 
there wass in the old times. The shop- 
keepers do not make so much money 
as before, when the men were wild and 
drunk in the daytime, and had plenty 
to spend when the police-boat did not 
catch them. But the fishermen, they are 
ferry much better without the money; 
and I can say for them, Mr. Lavender, 
that there is no better fishermen on the 
coast. They are ferry fine, tall men, 
and they are ferry well dressed in their 
blue clothes, and they are manly fellows, 
whether they are drunk or whether they 
are sober. Now look at this, sir, that in 
the worst of weather they will neffer tek 
whisky with them when they go out to the 
sea at night, for they think it is coward- 
ly. And they are ferry fine fellows, and 
gentlemanly in their ways, and they are 
ferry good-natured to strangers.” 

“I have heard that of them on all 
hands,” Lavender said, “and some day 
I hope to put their civility and good- 
fellowship to the proof.” 

That was merely the idle conversation 
of a summer evening : no one paid any 
further attention to it, nor did even Lav- 
ender himself think again of his vague- 
ly-expressed hope of some day visiting 
Tarbert. Let us now shift the scene of 
this narrative to Tarbert itself. 

When you pass from the broad and 
blue waters of Loch Fyne into the nar- 
row and rocky channel leading to Tar- 
bert harbor, you find before you an al- 
most circular bay, round which stretches 
an irregular line of white houses. There 
is an abundance of fishing-craft in the 
harbor, lying in careless and picturesque 
groups, with their brown hulls and spars 
sending a ruddy reflection down on the 
lapping water, which is green under the 


224 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


shadow of each boat. Along the shore 
stand the tall poles on which the fisher- 
men dry their nets, and above these, on 
the summit of a rocky crag, rise the ruins 
of an old castle, with the daylight shin- 
ing through the empty windows. Be- 
yond the houses, again, lie successive 
lines of hills, at this moment lit up by 
shafts of sunlight that lend a glowing 
warmth and richness to the fine colors 
of a late autumn. The hills are red and 
brown with rusted bracken and heather, 
and here and there the smooth waters 
of the bay catch a tinge of other and 
varied hues. In one of the fishing- 
smacks that lie almost underneath the 
shadow of the tall crag on which the 
castle ruins stand, an artist has put a 
rough-and-ready easel, and is apparent- 
ly busy at work painting a group of 
boats just beyond. Some indication of 
the rich colors of the craft — their ruddy 
sails, brown nets and bladders, and their 
varnished but not painted hulls — already 
appears on the canvas ; and by and by 
some vision may arise of the far hills in 
their soft autumnal tints and of the bold 
blue and white sky moving overhead. 
Perhaps the old man who is smoking in 
the stern of one of the boats has been 
placed there on purpose. A boy seated 
on some nets occasionally casts an anx- 
ious glance toward the painter, as if to 
inquire when his penance will be over. 

A small open boat, with a heap of 
stones for ballast, and with no great 
elegance in shape of rigging, comes 
slowly in from the mouth of the harbor, 
and is gently run alongside the boat in 
which the man is painting.' A fresh- 
colored young fellow, with voluminous 
and curly brown hair, who has dressed 
himself as a yachtsman, calls out, “ Lav- 
ender, do you know the White Rose, a 
big schooner yacht ? — about eighty tons 
I should think.” 

“ Yes,” Lavender said, without turning 
round or taking his eyes off the canvas. 

‘‘Whose is she ?” 

“ Lord Newstead’s.” 

‘‘Well, either he or his skipper hailed 
me just now and wanted to know wheth- 
er you were here. I said you were. The 
fellow asked me if I was going into the 


harbor. I said I was. So he gave me 
a message for you' — that they would hang 
about outside for half an hour or so, if 
you would go out to them and take a 
run up to Ardishaig.” 

‘‘I can’t, Johnny.” 

“ I’d take you out, you know.” 

“ I don’t want to go.” 

‘‘But look here, Lavender,” said the 
younger man, seizing hold of Laven- 
der’s boat and causing the easel to shake 
dangerously : “ he asked me to lunch- 
eon, too.” 

“Why don’t you go, then?” was the 
only reply, uttered rather absently. 

“I can’t go without you.” 

“Well, I don’t mean to go.” 

The younger man looked vexed for a 
moment, and then said in a tone of ex- 
postulation, “ You know it is very absurd 
of you going on like this, Lavender. 
No fellow can paint decently if he gets 
out of bed in the middle of the night 
and waits for daylight to rush up to his 
easel. How many hours have you been 
at work already to-day ? If you don’t 
give your eyes a rest, they will get color- 
blind to a dead certainty. Do you think 
you will paint the whole place off the 
face of the earth, now that the other fel- 
lows have gone ?” 

“ I can’t be bothered talking to you. 
Johnny. You’ll make me throw some- 
thing at you. Go away.” 

“ I think it’s rather mean, you know,” 
continued the persistent Johnny, “fora 
fellow like you, who doesn’t need it, to 
come and fill the market all at once, 
while we unfortunate devils can scarcely 
get a crust. And there are two heron 
just round the point, and I have my 
breech-loader and a dozen cartridges 
here.” 

“ Go away, Johnny !” That was all 
the answer he got. 

“ I’ll go out and tell Lord Newstead 
that you are a cantankerous brute. I 
suppose he’ll have the decency to offer 
me luncheon, and I dare say I could get 
him a shot at these heron. You are a 
fool not to come, Lavender;” and so say- 
ing the young man put out again, and 
he was heard to go away talking to him- 
self about obstinate idiots and greed and 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


225 


the certainty of getting a shot at the 
heron. 

When he had quite gone, Lavender, 
who had scarcely raised his eyes from 
his work, suddenly put down his palette 
and brushes — he almost dropped them, 
inde&d — and quickly put up both his 
hands to his head, pressing them on the 
side of his temples. The old fisherman 
in the boat beyond noticed this strange 
movement, and forthwith caught a rope, 
hauled the boat across a stretch of water, 
and then came scrambling over bow- 
sprit, lowered sails and nets to where 
Lavender had just sat down. 

“ Wass there anything the matter, sir ?” 
he said with much evidence of concern. 

“My head is a little bad, Donald,” 
Lavender said, still pressing his hands 
on his temples, as if to get rid of some 
strange feeling. “ I wish you would pull 
in to the shore and get me some whisky.” 

"Oh ay,” said the old man, hastily 
scrambling into the little black boat ly- 
ing beside the smack; “and it is no 
wonder to me this will come to you, sir, 
for I hef never seen any of the gentle- 
men so long at the pentin as you — from 
the morning till the night ; and it is no 
wonder to me this will come to you. 
But I will get you the whushky : it is a 
grand thing, the whushky.” 

The old fisherman was not long in 
getting ashore and running up to the 
cottage in which Lavender lived, and 
getting a bottle of whisky and a glass. 
Then he got down to the boat again, 
and was surprised that he could nowhere 
see Mr. Lavender on board the smack. 
Perhaps he had lain down on the nets 
in the bottom of the boat. 

When Donald got out to the smack 
he found the young man lying insen- 
sible, his face white and his teeth clench- 
ed. With something of a cry the old 
fisherman jumped into the boat, knelt 
down, and proceeded in a rough and 
ready fashion to force some whisky into 
Lavender’s mouth. “Oh ay, oh yes, it 
is a grand thing, the whushky,” he mut- 
tered to himself. “ Oh yes, sir, you must 
hef some more : it is no matter if you 
will choke. It is ferry good whushky, 
and will do you no harm whatever; 


and oh yes, sir, that is ferry well, and 
you are all right again, and you will sit 
quite quiet now, and you will hef a little 
more whushky.” 

The young man looked round him : 
“ Have you been ashore, Donald ? Oh 
yes — I suppose so. Did I tumble ? 
Well, I am all right now: it was the 
glare of the sea that made me giddy. 
Take a dram for yourself, Donald.” 

“There is but the one glass, sir,” said 
Donald, who had picked up something 
of the notions of gentlefolks, “but I will 
just tek the bottle;” and so, to avoid 
drinking out of the same glass (which 
was rather a small one), he was good 
enough to take a pull, and a strong pull, 
at the black bottle. Then he heaved a 
sigh, and wiped the top of the bottle with 
his sleeve. "Yes, as I was saying, sir, 
there was none of the gentlemen I hef 
effer seen in Tarbert will keep at the 
pentin so long ass you; and many of 
them will be stronger ass you, and will be 
more accustomed to it whatever. But 
when a man iss making money — ” and 
Donald shook his head : he knew it was 
useless to argue. 

“ But I am not making money, Don- 
ald,” Lavender said, still looking a trifle 
pale. “ I doubt whether I have made 
as much as you have since I came to 
Tarbert.” 

“Oh yes,” said Donald contentedly, 
“ all the gentlemen will say that. They 
never hef any money. But wass you 
ever with them when they could not get 
a dram because they had no money to 
pay for it ?” 

Donald’s test of impecuniosity could 
not be gainsaid. Lavender laughed, and 
bade him get back into the other boat. 

“’Deed I will not,” said Donald sturd- 
ily* 

Lavender stared at him. 

“ Oh no : you wass doing quite enough 
the day already, or you would not hef 
tumbled into the boat whatever. And 
supposing that you was to hef tumbled 
into the water, you would have been 
trooned as sure as you wass alive.” 

“And a good job, too, Donald,” said 
the younger man, idly looking at the 
lapping green water. 


226 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


Donald shook his head gravely : “You 
would not say that if you had friends of 
yours that was trooned, and if you had 
seen them when they went down in the 
water.” 

“ They say it is an easy death, Donald.” 

“They neffer tried it that said that,” 
said the old fisherman gloomily. “It 
wass one day the son of my sister wass 
coming over from Saltcoats — But I hef 
no wish to speak of it; and that wass 
but one among ferry many that I have 
known.” 

" How long is it since you were in the 
Lewis, did you say ?” Lavender asked, 
changing the subject. Donald was ac- 
customed to have the talk suddenly di- 
verted into this channel. He could not 
tell why the young English gentleman 
wanted him continually to be talking 
about the Lewis. 

“ Oh, it is many and many a year ago, 
as I hef said ; and you will know far 
more about the Lewis than I will. But 
Stornoway, that is a fine big town ; and 
I hef a cousin there that keeps a shop, 
and is a very rich man whatever, and 
many’s the time he will ask me to come 
and see him. And if the Lord be spared, 
maybe I will some day.” 

“ You mean if you be spared, Donald.” 

“Oh, ay: it is all wan,” said Donald. 
^ Lavender had brought with him some 
bread and cheese in a piece of paper for 
luncheon ; and this store of frugal pro- 
visions having been opened out, the old 
fisherman was invited to join in — an in- 
vitation he gravely but not eagerly ac- 
cepted. He took off his blue bonnet 
and said grace : then he took the bread 
and cheese in his hand and looked round 
inquiringly. There was a stone jar of 
water in the bottom of the boat: that 
was not what Donald was looking after. 
Lavender handed him the black bottle 
he had brought out from the cottage, 
which was more to his mind. And then, 
this humble meal despatched, the old 
man was persuaded to go back to his 
post, and Lavender continued his work. 

The short afternoon was drawing to a 
close when young Johnny Eyre came 
sailing in from Loch Fyne, himself and 
a boy of ten or twelve managing that 


crank little boat with its top-heavy sails. 
“Are you at work yet, Lavender?” he 
said. “ I never saw such a beggar. It’s 
getting quite dark.” 

“What sort of luncheon did Newstead 
give you, Johnny ?” 

“ Oh, something worth going for, I can 
tell you. You want to live in Tarbert 
for a month or two to find out the value 
of decent cooking and good wine. He 
was awfully surprised when I described 
this place to him. He wouldn’t believe 
you were living here in a cottage : I said 
a garret, for I pitched it hot and strong, 
mind you. I said you were living in a 
garret, that you never saw a razor, and 
lived on oatmeal porridge and whisky, 
and that your only amusement was going 
out at night and risking your neck in 
this delightful boat of mine. You should 
have seen him examining this remark- 
able vessel. And there were two ladies 
on board, and they were asking after 
you, too.” 

“Who were they ?” 

“ I don’t know. I didn’t catch their 
names when I was introduced ; but the 
noble skipper called one of them Polly.” 

“Oh, I know.” 

“Ain’t you coming ashore, Lavender? 
You can’t see to work now.” 

“All right! \ shall put my traps 
ashore, and then I’ll have a run with 
you down Loch Fyne if you like, 
Johnny.” 

“Well, I don’t like,” said the hand- 
some lad frankly, “ for it’s looking rather 
squally about. It seems to me you’re 
bent on drowningyourself. Before those 
other fellows went, they came to the 
conclusion that you had committed a 
murder.” 

“ Did they really ?” Lavender said with 
little interest. 

“And if you go away and live in that 
wild place you were talking of during 
the winter, they will be quite sure of it. 
Why, man, you’d come back with your 
hair turned white. You might as well 
think of living by yourself at the Arctic 
Pole.” 

Neither Johnny Eyre nor any of the 
men who had just left Tarbert knew 
anything of Frank Lavender’s recent 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


227 


history, and Lavender himself was not 
disposed to be communicative. They 
would know soon enough when they 
went up to London. In the mean time 
they were surprised to find that Laven- 
der’s habits were very singularly altered. 
He had grown miserly. They laughed 
when he told them he had no money, 
and he did not seek to persuade them 
of the fact ; but it was clear, at all events, 
that none of them lived so frugally or 
worked so anxiously as he. Then, when 
his work was done in the evening, and 
when they met alternately at each other’s 
rooms to dine off mutton and potatoes, 
with a glass of whisky and a pipe and 
a game of cards to follow, what was the 
meaning of those sudden fits of silence 
that would strike in when the general 
hilarity was at its pitch ? And what was 
the meaning of the utter recklessness he 
displayed when they would go out of an 
evening in their open sailing boats to 
shoot sea-fowl, or make a voyage along 
the rocky coast in the dead of night to 
wait for the dawn to show them the 
haunts of the seals ? The Lavender 
they had met occasionally in London 
was a fastidious, dilettante, self-possess- 
ed, and yet not disagreeable fellow : this 
man was almost pathetically anxious 
about his work, oftentimes he was mo- 
rose and silent, and then again there 
was no sort of danger or difficulty he 
was not ready to plunge into when they 
were sailing about that iron-bound coast. 
They could not make it out, but the 
joke among themselves was that he had 
committed a murder, and therefore he 
was reckless. 

This Johnny Eyre was not much of an 
artist, but he liked the society of artists : 
he had a little money of his own, plenty 
of time, and a love of boating and shoot- 
ing, and so he had pitched his tent at 
Tarbert, and was proud to cherish the 
delusion that he was working hard and 
earning fame and wealth. As a matter 
of fact, he never earned anything, but 
he had very good spirits, and living in 
Tarbert is cheap. 

From the moment that Lavender had 
come to the place, Johnny Eyre made 
him his special companion. He had a 


great respect for a man who could shoot 
anything anywhere ; and when he and 
Lavender came back together from a 
cruise, there was no use saying which 
had actually done the brilliant deeds the 
evidence of which was carried ashore. 
But'Lavender, oddly enough, knew little 
about sailing, and Johnny was pleased 
to assume the airs of an instructor on this 
point ; his only difficulty being that his 
pupil had more than the ordinary hardi- 
hood of an ignoramus, and was rather 
inclined to do reckless things even after 
he had sufficient skill to know that they 
were dangerous. 

Lavender got into the small boat, tak- 
ing his canvas with him, but leaving his 
easel in the fishing-smack. He pulled 
himself and Johnny Eyre ashore : they 
scrambled up the rocks and into the 
road, and then they went into the small 
white cottage in which Lavender lived. 
The picture was, for greater safety, left 
in Lavender’s bed-room, which already 
contained about a dozen canvases with 
sketches in various stages on them. 
Then he went out to his friend again. 

“ I’ve had a long day to-day, Johnny. 
I wish you’d go out with me : the excite- 
ment of a squall would clear one’s brain, 
I fancy.” 

“Oh, I’ll go out if you like,” Eyre 
said, “but I shall take very good care 
to run in before the squall comes, if 
there’s any about. I don’t think there 
will be, after all. I fancied I saw a flash 
of lightning about half an hour ago down 
in the south, but nothing has come of it. 
There are some curlew about, and the 
guillemots are in thousands. You don’t 
seem to care about shooting guillemots, 
Lavender.” 

“ Well, you see, potting a bird that is 
sitting on the water — ” said Lavender 
with a shrug. 

“Oh, it isn’t as easy as you might im- 
agine. Of course you could kill them 
if you liked, but everybody ain’t such a 
swell as you are with a gun ; and mind 
you, it’s uncommonly awkward to catch 
the right moment for firing, when the 
bird goes bobbing up and down on the 
waves, disappearing altogether every 
second second. I think it’s very good 


228 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


fun myself. It is very exciting when you 
don’t know the moment the bird will 
dive, and whether you can afford to go 
any nearer. And as for shooting them 
on the water, you have to do that, for 
when do you get a chance of shooting 
them flying ?” 

“ I don’t see much necessity for shoot- 
ing them at any time,” said Lavender 
as he and Eyre went down to the shore 
again, ‘‘but I am glad to see you get 
some amusement out of it. Have you 
got cartridges with you ? Is your gun 
in the boat?” 

“Yes. Come along. We’ll have a 
run out, any how.” 

When they pulled out again to that 
cockle-shell craft with its stone ballast 
and big brown mainsail, the boy was 
sent ashore and the two companions set 
out by themselves. By this time the sun 
had gone down, and a strange green 
twilight was shining over the sea. As 
they got farther out the dusky shores 
seemed to have a pale mist hanging 
around them, but there were no clouds 
on the hills, for a clear sky shone over- 
head, awaiting the coming of the stars. 
Strange indeed was the silence out here, 
broken only by the lapping of the water 
on the sides of the boat and the calling 
of birds in the distance. Far away the 
orange ray of a lighthouse began to 
quiver in the lambent dusk. The pale 
green light on the waves did not die out, 
but the shadows grew darker, so that 
Eyre, with his gun close at hand, could 
not make out his groups of guillemots, 
although he heard them calling all 
around. They had come out too late, 
indeed, for any such purpose. 

Thither on those beautiful evenings, 
after his day’s work was over, Lavender 
was accustomed to come, either by him- 
self or with his present companion. 
Johnny Eyre did not intrude on his 
solitude : he was invariably too eager to 
get a shot, his chief delight being to get 
to the bow, to let the boat drift for a while 
silently through the waves, so that she 
might come unawares on some flock of 
sea-birds. Lavender, sitting in the stern 
with the tiller in his hand, was really 
alone in this world of water and sky, 


with all the majesty of the night and the 
stars around him. 

And on these occasions he used to sit 
and dream of the beautiful time long ago 
in Loch Roag, when nights such as these 
used to come over the Atlantic, and find 
Sheila and himself sailing on the peace- 
ful waters, or seated high up on the 
rocks listening to the murmur of the 
tide. Here was the same strange silence, 
the same solemn and pale light in the 
sky, the same mystery of the moving 
plain all around them that seemed some- 
how to be alive, and yet voiceless and sad. 
Many a time his heart became so full 
of recollections that he had almost call- 
ed aloud "Sheila! Sheila!” and waited 
for the sea and the sky to answer him 
with the sound of her voice. In these 
bygone days he had pleased himself 
with the fancy that the girl was somehow 
the product of all the beautiful aspects 
of Nature around her. It was the sea 
that was in her eyes, it was the fair sun- 
light that shone in her face, the breath 
of her life was the breath of the moor- 
land winds. He had written verses about 
this fancy of hers ; and he had conveyed 
them secretly to her, sure that she, at 
least, would find no defects in them. 
And many a time, far away from Loch 
Roag and from Sheila/ lines of this con- 
ceit would wander through his brain, set 
to the saddest of all music, the music of 
irreparable loss. What did they say to 
him, now that he recalled them like 
some half - forgotten voice out of the 
strange past ? — 

For she and the clouds and the breezes were one. 

And the hills and the sea had conspired with the sun 
To charm and bewilder all men with the grace 
They combined and conferred on her wonderful face. 

The sea lapped around the boat, the 
green light on the waves grew somehow 
less intense ; in the silence the first of 
the stars came out, and somehow the 
time in which he had seen Sheila in 
these rare and magical colors seemed to 
become more and more remote : 

An angel in passing looked downward and smiled. 

And carried to heaven the fame of the child ; 

And then what the waves and the sky and the sun 
And the tremulous breath of the hills had begun. 
Required but one touch. To finish the whole, 

God loved her and gave her a beautiful soul. 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


229 


And what had he done with this rare 
treasure entrusted to him ? His com- 
panions, jesting among themselves, had 
said that he had committed a murder : 
in his own heart there was something at 
this moment of a murderer’s remorse. 

Johnny Eyre uttered a short cry. Lav- 
ender looked ahead and saw that some 
black object was disappearing among the 
waves. 

“What a fright I got!” Eyre said 
with a laugh. “ I never saw the fellow 
come near, and he came up just below 
the bowsprit. He came heeling over as 
quiet as a mouse. I say, Lavender, I 
think we might as well cut it now : my 
eyes are quite bewildered with the light 
on the water. I couldn’t make out a 
kraken if it was coming across our bows.” 

“ Don’t be in a hurry, Johnny. We’ll 
put her out a bit, and then let her drift 
back. I want to tell you a story.” 

“Oh, all right,” he said; and so they 
put her head round, and soon she was 
lying over before the breeze, and slowly 
drawing away from those outlines of the 
coast which showed them where Tarbert 
harbor cut into the land. And then 
once more they let her drift, and young 
Eyre took a nip of whisky and settled 
himself so as to hear Lavender’s story, 
whatever it might be. 

“You knew I was married ?” 

“Yes.” 

“ Didn’t you ever wonder why my wife 
did not come here ?” 

“Why should I wonder? Plenty of 
fellows have to spend half the year apart 
from their wives : the only thing in your 
case I couldn’t understand was the ne- 
cessity for your doing it. For you know 
that’s all nonsense about your want of 
funds.” 

“ It isn’t nonsense, Johnny. But now, 
if you like, I will tell you why my wife 
has never come here.” 

Then he told the story, out there under 
the stars, with no thought of interruption, 
for there was a world of moving water 
around them. It was the first time he 
had let any one into his confidence, and 
perhaps the darkness aided his revela- 
tions ; but at any rate he went over all 
the old time, until it seemed to his com- 


panion that he was talking to himself, 
so aimless and desultory were his pa- 
thetic reminiscences. He called her 
Sheila, though Eyre had never heard 
her name. He spoke of her father as 
though Eyre must have known him. 
And yet this rambling series of con- 
fessions and self-reproaches and tender 
memories did form a certain sort of nar- 
rative, so that the young fellow sitting 
quietly in the boat there got a pretty fair 
notion of what had happened. 

“You are an unlucky fellow,” he said 
to Lavender. “ I never heard anything 
like that. But you know you must have 
exaggerated a good deal about it : I should 
like to hear her story. I am sure you 
could not have treated her like that.” 

“ God knows how I did, but the truth 
is just as I have told you ; and although 
I was blind enough at the time, I can 
read the whole story now in letters of 
fire. I hope you will never have such 
a thing constantly before your eyes, 
Johnny.” 

The lad was silent for some time, and 
then he said, rather timidly, “Do you 
think, Lavender, she knows how sorry 
you are ?” 

“If she did, what good would that 
do ?” said the other. 

“Women are awfully forgiving, you 
know,” Johnny said in a hesitating fash- 
ion. “I — I don’t think it is quite fair 
not to give her a chance — a chance of 
— of being generous, you know. You 
know, I think the better a woman is, the 
more inclined she is to be charitable to 
other folks who mayn’t be quite up to 
the mark, you know ; and you see, it 
ain’t every one who can claim to be 
always doing the right thing; and the 
next best thing to that is to be sorry for 
what you’ve done and try to do better. 
It’s rather cheeky, you know, my ad- 
vising you, or trying to make you pluck 
up your spirits ; but I’ll tell you what it 
is, Lavender, if I knew her well enough 
I’d go straight to her to-morrow, and 
I’d put in a good word for you, and tell 
her some things she doesn’t know ; and 
you’d see if she wouldn’t write you a 
letter, or even come and see you.” 

" That is all nonsense, Johnny, though 


230 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


it’s very good of you to think of it. The 
mischief I have done isn’t to be put 
aside by the mere writing of a letter.” 

‘‘But it seems to me,” Johnny said 
with some warmth, ‘‘that you are as un- 
fair to her as to yourself in not giving 
her a chance. You don’t know how 
willing she may be to overlook every- 
thing that is past.” 

“ If she were, I am not fit to go near 
her. I couldn’t have the cheek to try, 
Johnny.” 

“ But what more can you be than sorry 
for what is past?” said the younger fel- 
low persistently. ‘‘ And you don’t know 
how pleased it makes a good woman to 
give her the chance of forgiving any- 
body. And if we were all to set up for 
being archangels, and if there was to be 
no sort of getting back for us after we 
had made a slip, where should we be ? 
And in place of going to her and making 
it all right, you start away for the Sound 
of Islay ; and, by Jove ! won’t you find 
out what spending a winter under these 
Jura mountains means ! I have tried it, 
and I know.” 

A flash of lightning, somewhere down 
among the Arran hills, interrupted the 
speaker, and drew the attention of the 
two young men to the fact that in the 
east and south-east the stars were no 
longer visible, while something of a brisk 
breeze had sprung up. 

“ This breeze will take us back splen- 
didly,” Johnny said, getting ready again 
for the run in to Tarbert. 

He had scarcely spoken when Laven- 
der called attention to a fishing- smack 
that was apparently making for the har- 
bor. With all sails set she was sweep- 
ing by them like some black phantom 
across the dark plain of the sea. They 
could not make out the figures on board 
of her, but as she passed some one call- 
ed out to them. 

“What did he say ?” Lavender asked. 

“I don’t know,” his companion said, 
“ but it was some sort of warning, I sup- 
pose. By Jove, Lavender, what is that ?” 

Behind them there was a strange hiss- 
ing noise that the wind brought along 
to them, but nothing could be seen. 

“ Rain, isn’t it ?” Lavender said. 


“There never was rain like that,” his 
companion said. “ That is a squall, and 
it will be here presently. We must haul 
down the sails. For God’s sake, look 
sharp, Lavender !” 

There was certainly no time to lose, 
for the noise behind them was increasing 
and deepening into a roar, and the 
heavens had grown black overhead, so 
that the spars and ropes of the crank 
little boat could scarcely be made out. 
They had just got the sails down when 
the first gust of the squall struck the 
boat as with a blow of iron, and sent her 
staggering forward into the trough of the 
sea. Then all around them came the 
fury of the storm, and the cause of the 
sound they had heard was apparent in 
the foaming water that was torn and 
scattered abroad by the gale. Up from 
the black south-east came the fierce hur- 
ricane, sweeping everything before it, 
and hurling this creaking and straining 
boat about as if it were a cork. They 
could see little of the sea around them, 
but they could hear the awful noise of 
it, and they knew they were being swept 
along on those hurrying waves toward 
a coast which was invisible in the black- 
ness of the night. 

“Johnny, we’ll never make the harbor : 
I can’t see a light,” Lavender cried. 
“ Hadn’t we better try to keep her up the 
loch ?” 

“ We must make the harbor,” his com- 
panion said : “she can’t stand this much 
longer.” 

Blinding torrents of rain were now 
being driven down by the force of the 
wind, so that all around them nothing 
was visible but a wild boiling and seeth- 
ing of clouds and waves. Eyre was up 
at the bow, trying to catch some glimpse 
of the outlines of the coast or to make 
out some light that would show them 
where the entrance to Tarbert harbor 
lay. If only some lurid shaft of light- 
ning would pierce the gloom ! for they 
knew that they were being driven head- 
long on an iron-bound coast ; and amid 
all the noise of the wind and the sea 
they listened with a fear that had no 
words for the first roar of the waves 
along the rocks. 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


231 


Suddenly Lavender heard a shrill 
scream, almost like the cry that a hare 
gives when it finds the dog’s fangs in its 
neck ; and at the same moment, amid 
all the darkness of the night, a still 
blacker object seemed to start out of the 
gloom right ahead of them. The boy 
had no time to shout any warning be- 
yond that cry of despair, for with a wild 
crash the boat struck on the rocks, rose 
and struck again, and was then dashed 
over by a heavy sea, both of its occu- 
pants being thrown into the fierce swirls 
of foam that were dashing in and through 
the rocky channels. Strangely enough, 
they were thrown together ; and Laven- 
der, clinging to the sea-weed, instinct- 
ively laid hold of his companion just as 
the Matter appeared to be slipping into 
t2ie gulf beneath. 

“Johnny,” he cried, “hold on ! — hold on 
to me — or we shall both go in a minute.” 

But the lad had no life left in him, 
and lay like a log there, while each 
wave that struck and rolled hissing and 
gurgling through the channels between 
the rocks seemed to drag at him and 
seek to suck him down into the dark- 
ness. With one despairing effort, Lav- 
ender struggled to get him farther up on 
the slippery sea-weed, and succeeded. 
But his success had lost him his own 
vantage-ground, and he knew that he 
was going down into the swirling waters 
beneath, close by the broken boat that 
was still being dashed about by the 
waves. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

“HAME FAIN WOULD I BE.” 

Unexpected circumstances had de- 
tained Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter 
in London long after everybody else had 
left, but at length they were ready to 
start for their projected trip into Switzer- 
land. On the day before their departure 
Ingram dined with them — on his own 
invitation. He had got into a habit of 
letting them know when it would suit 
him to devote an evening to their instruc- 
tion ; and it was difficult indeed to say 
which of the two ladies submitted the 


more readily and meekly to the dicta- 
torial enunciation of his opinions. Mrs. 
Kavanagh, it is true, sometimes dissent- 
ed in so far as a smile indicated dissent, 
but her daughter scarcely reserved to 
herself so much liberty. Mr. Ingram 
had taken her in hand, and expected of 
her the obedience and respect due to his 
superior age. 

And yet, somehow or other, he occa- 
sionally found himself indirectly solicit- 
ing the advice of this gentle, clear-eyed 
and clear-headed young person, more 
especially as regarded the difficulties 
surrounding Sheila; and sometimes a 
chance remark of hers, uttered in a 
timid or careless or even mocking fash- 
ion, would astonish him by the rapid 
light it threw on these dark troubles. 
On this evening — the last evening they 
were spending in London — it was his 
own affairs which he proposed to men- 
tion to Mrs. Lorraine, and he had no 
more hesitation in doing so than if she 
had been his oldest friend. He wanted 
to ask her what he should do about the 
money that Mrs. Lavender had left him ; 
and he intended to be a good deal more 
frank with Mrs. Lorraine than with any 
of the others to whom he had spoken 
about the matter. F or he was well aware 
that Mrs. Lavender had at first resolved 
that he should have at least a consider- 
able portion of her wealth, or why should 
she have asked him how he would like 
to be a rich man ? 

“I do not think,” said Mrs. Lorraine 
quietly, “that there is any use in your 
asking me what you should do, for I 
know' what you will do, whether it ac- 
cords with any one’s opinion or no. 
And yet you would find a great advan- 
tage in having money.” 

“Oh, I know that,” he said readily. 
“ I should like to be rich beyond any- 
thing that ever happened in a drama; 
and I should take my chance of all the 
evil influences that money is supposed 
to exert. Do you know, I think you 
rich people are very unfairly treated.” 

“But we are not rich,” said Mrs. 
Kavanagh, passing at the time. “Ce- 
cilia and I find ourselves very poor some- 
times.” 


2 3 2 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


“But I quite agree with Mr. Ingram, 
mamma," said Cecilia — as if any one had 
had the courage to disagree with Mr. 
Ingram! — “rich people are shamefully 
ill-treated. If you go to a theatre, now, 
you find that all the virtues are on the 
side of the poor, and if there are a few 
vices, you get a thousand excuses for 
them. No one takes account of the 
temptations of the rich. You have peo- 
ple educated from their infancy to im- 
agine that the whole world was made 
for them, every wish they have grati- 
fied, every day showing them people 
dependent on them and grateful for 
favors ; and no allowance is made for 
such a temptation to become haughty, 
self-willed and overbearing. But of 
course it stands to reason that the rich 
never have justice done them in plays 
and stories, for the people who write 
are poor.” 

“Not all of them.” 

“ But enough to strike an average of 
injustice. And it is very hard. For it 
is the rich who buy books and who take 
boxes at the theatres, and then they find 
themselves grossly abused ; whereas the 
humble peasant who can scarcely read 
at all, and who never pays more than 
sixpence for a seat in the gallery, is flat- 
tered and coaxed and caressed until one 
wonders whether the source of virtue is 
the drinking of sour ale. Mr. Ingram, 
you do it yourself. You impress mamma 
and me with the belief that we are mis- 
erable sinners if we are not continually 
doing some act of charity. Well, that is 
all very pleasant and necessary, in mod- 
eration ; but you don’t find the poor 
folks so very anxious to live for other 
people. They don’t care much what 
becomes of us. They take your port 
wine and flannels as if they were con- 
ferring a favor on you, but as for yojtr 
condition and prospects in this world 
and the next, they don’t trouble much 
about that. Now, mamma, just wait a 
moment.” 

“ I will not. You are a bad girl,” said 
Mrs. Kavanagh severely. “Here has 
Mr. Ingram been teaching you and mak- 
ing you better for ever so long back, 
and you pretend to accept his counsel 


and reform yourself; and then all at 
once you break out, and throw down 
the tablets of the law, and conduct your- 
self like a heathen.” 

“ Because I want him to explain, mam- 
ma. I suppose he considers it wicked 
of us to start for Switzerland to-morrow. 
The money we shall spend in traveling 
might have despatched a cargo of mus- 
kets to some missionary station, so 
that — ” 

“Cecilia !” 

“Oh no,” Ingram said carelessly, and 
nursing his knee with both his hands as 
usual, “traveling is not wicked: it is 
only unreasonable. A traveler, you 
know, is a person who has a house in 
one town, and who goes to live in a 
house in another town, in order to have 
the pleasure of paying for both.” 

“Mr. Ingram,” said Mrs. Kavanagh, 
“will you talk seriously for one minute, 
and tell me whether we are to expect to 
see you in the Tyrol ?” 

But Ingram was not in a mood for 
talking seriously, and he waited to hear 
Mrs. Lorraine strike in with some calmly 
audacious invitation. She did not, how- 
ever, and he turned round from her 
mother to question her. He was sur- 
prised to find that her eyes were fixed 
on the ground and that something like a 
tinge of color was in her face. He turn- 
ed rapidly away again. “Well, Mrs. 
Kavanagh,” he said with a fine air of 
indifference, “the last time we spoke 
about that I was not in the difficulty I 
am in at present. How could I go trav- 
eling just now, without knowing how to 
regulate my daily expenses ? Am I to 
travel with six white horses and silver 
bells, or trudge on foot with a wallet ?” 

“ But you know quite well,” said Mrs. 
Lorraine warmly — “you know you will 
not touch that money that Mrs. Laven- 
der has left you.” 

“Oh, pardon me,” he said : “I should 
rejoice to have it if it did not properly 
belong to some one else. And the dif- 
ficulty is, that Mr. Mackenzie is obvi- 
ously very anxious that neither Mr. Lav- 
ender nor Sheila should have it. If 
Sheila gets it, of course she will give it 
to her husband. Now, if it is not to be 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


233 


given to her, do you think I should re- 
gard the money with any particular hor- 
ror and refuse to touch it ? That would 
be very romantic, perhaps, but I should 
be sorry, you know, to give my friends 
the most disquieting doubts about my 
sanity. Romance goes out of a man’s 
head when the hair gets gray.” 

“Until a man has gray hair,” Mrs. 
Lorraine said, still with some unneces- 
sary fervor, “he does not know that 
there are things much more valuable 
than money. You wouldn’t touch that 
money just now, and all the thinking 
and reasoning in the world will never 
get you to touch it.” 

"What am I to do with it?” he said 
meekly. 

“Give it to Mr. Mackenzie, in trust 
for his daughter,” Mrs. Lorraine said 
promptly; and then, seeing that her 
mother had gone to the end of the draw- 
ing-room to fetch something or other, 
she added quickly, “ I should be more 
sorry than I can tell you to find you ac- 
cepting this money. You do not wish 
to have it. You do not need it. And 
if you did take it, it would prove a source 
of continual embarrassment and regret 
to you, and no assurances on the part 
of Mr. Mackenzie would be able to con- 
vince you that you had acted rightly by 
his daughter. Now, if you simply hand 
over your responsibilities to him, he can- 
not refuse them, for the sake of his own 
I child, and you are left with the sense of 
having acted nobly and generously. I 
I hope there are many men who would do 
what I ask you to do, but I have not 
met many to whom I could make such 
an appeal with any hope. But, after all, 
that is only advice. I have no right to 
ask you to do anything like that. You 
asked me for my opinion about it. Well, 
that is it. But I should not have asked 
you to act on it.” 

“But I will,” he said in a low voice; 
and then he went to the other end of the 
room, for Mrs. Kavanagh was calling 
him to help her in finding something 
she had lost. 

Before he left that evening Mrs. Lor- 
raine said to him, “We go by the night- 
mail to Paris to-morrow night, and we 


shall dine here at five. Would you have 
the courage to come up and join us in 
that melancholy ceremony ?” 

“ Oh yes,” he said, “ if I may go down 
to the station to see you away after- 
ward.” 

“ I think if we got you so far we should 
persuade you to go with us,” Mrs. Kav- 
anagh said with a smile. 

He sat silent for a minute. Of course 
she could not seriously mean such a 
thing. But at all events she would not 
be displeased if he crossed their path 
while they were actually abroad. 

“It is getting too late in the year to go 
to Scotland now,” he said with some 
hesitation. 

“Oh most certainly,” Mrs. Lorraine 
said. 

“ I don’t know where the man in whose 
yacht I was to have gone may be now. 
I might spend half my holiday in trying 
to catch him.” 

“ And during that time you would be 
alone,” Mrs. Lorraine said. 

“ I suppose the Tyrol is a very nice 
place,” he suggested. 

“Oh most delightful,” she exclaimed. 
“You know, we should go round by 
Switzerland, and go up by Luzerne and 
Zurich to the end of the Lake of Con- 
stance. Bregenz, mamma, isn’t that the 
place where we hired that good-natured 
man the year before last ?” 

“Yes, child.” 

“Now, you see, Mr. Ingram, if you 
had less time than we — if you could 
not start with us to-morrow — you might 
come straight down by Schaffhausen 
and the steamer, and catch us up there, 
and then mamma would become your 
guide. I am sure we should have some 
pleasant days together till you got tired 
of us, and then you could go off on a 
walking-tour if you pleased. And then, 
you know, there would be no difficulty 
about our meeting at Bregenz, for mam- 
ma and I have plenty of time, and we 
should wait there for a few days, so as 
to make sure.” 

“Cecilia,” said Mrs. Kavanagh, “you 
must not persuade Mr. Ingram against 
his will. He may have other duties — 
other friends to see, perhaps.” 


234 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


“ Who proposed it, mamma ?” said the 
daughter calmly. 

“ I did, as a mere joke. But of course, 
if Mr. Ingram thinks of going to the 
Tyrol, we should be most pleased to see 
him there.” 

“ Oh, I have no other friends whom I 
am bound to see,” Ingram said with 
some hesitation, “and I should like to 
go to the Tyrol. But — the fact is — I am 
afraid — ” 

"May I interrupt you?” said Mrs. 
Lorraine. “You do not like to leave 
London so long as your friend Sheila is 
in trouble. Is not that the case ? And 
yet she has her father to look after her. 
And it is clear you cannot do much for 
her when you do not even know where 
Mr. Lavender is. On the whole, I think 
you should consider yourself a little bit 
now, and not get cheated out of your 
holidays for the year.” 

“Very well,” Ingram said, “I shall be 
able to tell you to-morrow.” 

To be so phlegmatic and matter-of- 
fact a person, Mr. Ingram was sorely 
disturbed on going home that evening, 
nor did he sleep much during the night. 
For the more that he speculated on all 
the possibilities that might arise from 
his meeting those people in the Tyrol, 
the more pertinaciously did this refrain 
follow these excursive fancies : “ If I go 
to the Tyrol I shall fall in love with that 
girl, and ask her to marry me. And if 
I do so, what position should I hold, 
with regard to her, as a penniless man 
with a rich wife ?” 

He did not look at the question in 
such light as the opinion of the world 
might throw on it. The difficulty was 
what she herself might afterward come 
to think of their mutual relations. True 
it was that no one could be more gentle 
and submissive to him than she appear- 
ed to be. In matters of opinion and 
discussion he already ruled with an au- 
tocratic authority which he fully per- 
ceived himself, and exercised, too, with 
some sort of notion that it was good for 
this clear-headed young woman to have 
to submit to control. But of what avail 
would this moral authority be as against 
the consciousness she would have that 


it was her fortune that was supplying 
both with the means of living ? 

He went down to his office in the 
morning with no plans formed. The 
forenoon passed, and he had decided on 
nothing. At mid-day he suddenly be- 
thought him that it would be very pleas- 
ant if Sheila would go and see Mrs. Lor- 
raine ; and forthwith he did that which 
would have driven Frank Lavender out 
of his senses — he telegraphed to Mrs. 
Lorraine for permission to bring Sheila 
and her father to dinner at five. He 
certainly knew that such a request was 
a trifle cool, but he had discovered that 
Mrs. Lorraine was not easily shocked by 
such audacious experiments on her good 
nature. When he received the telegram 
in reply he knew it granted what he had 
asked. The words were merely, “ Cer- 
tainly, by all means, but not later than 
five.” 

Then he hastened down to the house j 
in which Sheila lived, and found that 
she and her father had just returned 
from visiting some exhibition. Mr. Mac- 
kenzie was not in the room. 

“Sheila,” Ingram said, “what would 
you think of my getting married ?” 

Sheila looked up with a bright smile 
and said, “ It would please me very much 
— it would be a great pleasure to me ; ; 
and I have expected it for some time.” 

“ You have expected it ?” he repeated I 
with a stare. 

“Yes,” she said quietly. 

“Then you fancy you know — ” he l 
said, or rather stammered, in great em- 
barrassment, when she interrupted him I 
by saying, 

“Oh yes, I think I know. When you 
came down every evening to tell me all 
the praises of Mrs. Lorraine, and how 
clever she was, and kind, I expected j 
you would come some day with another j 
message ; and now I am very glad to 
hear it. You have changed all my opin- 1 
ions about her, and — ” 

Then she rose and took both his hands, 
and looked frankly into his face. 

“ — And I do hope most sincerely you i 
will be happy, my dear friend.” 

Ingram was fairly taken aback at the 
consequences of his own imprudence. 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


235 


He had never dreamed for a moment 
that any one would have suspected such 
a thing ; and he had thrown out the sug- 
gestion to Sheila almost as a jest, be- 
lieving, of course, that it compromised 
no one. And here, before he had spoken 
a word to Mrs. Lorraine on the subject, 
he was being congratulated on his ap- 
proaching marriage. 

“Oh, Sheila,” he said, “this is all a 
mistake. It was a joke of mine. If I 
had known you would think of Mrs. 
Lorraine, I should not have said a word 
about it.” 

“ But it is Mrs. Lorraine ?” Sheila said. 

“Well, but I have never mentioned 
such a thing to her — never hinted it in 
the remotest manner. I dare say if I 
had she might laugh the matter aside as 
too absurd.” 

“She will not do that,” Sheila said. 
“If you ask her to marry you, she will 
marry you : I am sure of that from what 
I have heard, and she would be very 
foolish if she was not proud and glad to 
do that. And you — what doubt can you 
have, after all that you have been saying 
of late ?” 

“ But you don’t marry a woman mere- 
ly because you admire her cleverness 
and kindness,” he said ; and then he 
added suddenly, “Sheila, would you do 
me a great favor? Mrs. Lorraine and 
her mother are leaving for the Continent 
to-night. They dine at five, and I am 
commissioned to ask you and your papa 
if you would go up with me and have 
some dinner with them, you know, before 
they start. Won’t you do that, Sheila ?” 

The girl shook her head, without an- 
swering. She had not gone to any 
friend’s house since her husband had 
left London, and that house, above all 
others, was calculated to awaken in her 
bitter recollections. 

“Won’t you, Sheila ?” he said. “You 
used to go there. I know they like you 
very much. I have seen you very well 
pleased and comfortable there, and I 
thought you were enjoying yourself.” 

“ Yes, that is true,” she said ; and then 
she looked up, with a strange sort of smile 
on her lips, “ But ‘ what made the assem- 
bly shine ?’ ” 


That forced smile did not last long : 
the girl suddenly burst into tears, and 
rose and went away to the window. Mac- 
kenzie came into the room : he did not 
see his daughter was crying : “ Well, Mr. 
Ingram, and are you coming with us to 
the Lewis ? We cannot always be stay- 
ing in London, for there will be many 
things wanting the looking after in Bor- 
va, as you will know ferry well. And 
yet Sheila she will not go back; and 
Mairi too, she will be forgetting the ferry 
sight of her own people ; but if you wass 
coming with us, Mr. Ingram, Sheila she 
would come too, and it would be ferry 
good for her whatever.” 

“ I have brought you another proposal. 
Will you take Sheila to see the Tyrol, 
and I will go with you ?” 

“The Tyrol?” said Mr. Mackenzie. 
“Ay, it is a ferry long way away, but if 
Sheila will care to go to the Tyrol — oh 
yes, I will go to the Tyrol or anywhere 
if she will go out of London, for it is not 
good for a young girl to be always in the 
one house, and no company and no va- 
riety ; and I was saying to Sheila what 
good will she do sitting by the window 
and thinking over things, and crying 
sometimes ? By Kott, it is a foolish thing 
for a young girl, and I will hef no more 
of it !” 

In other circumstances Ingram would 
have laughed at this dreadful threat. 
D-espite the frown on the old man’s face, 
the sudden stamp of his foot and the 
vehemence of his words, Ingram knew 
that if Sheila had turned round and 
said that she wished to be shut up in a 
dark room for the rest of her life, the 
old King of Borva would have said, 
“Ferry well, Sheila,” in the meekest 
way, and would have been satisfied if 
only he could share her imprisonment 
with her. 

“But first of all, Mr. Mackenzie, I 
have another proposal to make to you,” 
Ingram said ; and then he urged upon 
Sheila’s father to accept Mrs. Lorraine’s 
invitation. 

Mr. Mackenzie was nothing loath . 
Sheila was living by far too monotonous 
a life. He went over to the window to 
her and said, “Sheila, my lass, you was 


236 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


going nowhere else this evening ; and it 
would be ferry convenient to go with 
Mr. Ingram, and he would see his friends 
away, and we could go to a theatre then. 
And it is no new thing for you to go to 
fine houses and see other people ; but it 
is new to me, and you wass saying what 
a beautiful house it wass many a time, 
and I hef wished to see it. And the 
people they are ferry kind, Sheila, to 
send me an invitation ; and if they wass 
to come to the Lewis, what would you 
think if you asked them to come to your 
house and they paid no heed to it ? Now, 
it is after four, Sheila, and if you wass to 
get ready now — *’ 

“Yes, I will go and get ready, papa,” 
she said. 

Ingram had a vague consciousness 
that he was taking Sheila up to intro- 
duce to her Mrs. Lorraine in a new cha- 
racter. Would Sheila look at the woman 
she used to fear and dislike in a wholly 
different fashion, and be prepared to 
adorn her with all the graces which he 
had so often described to her ? Ingram 
hoped that Sheila would get to like Mrs. 
Lorraine, and that by and by a better 
acquaintance between them might lead 
to a warm and friendly intimacy. Some- 
how, he felt that if Sheila would betray 
such a liking — if she would come to him 
and say honestly that she was rejoiced 
he meant to marry — all his doubts would 
be cleared away. Sheila had already 
said pretty nearly as much as that, but 
then it followed what she understood to 
be an announcement of his approaching 
marriage, and of course the girl’s kindly 
nature at once suggested a few pretty 
speeches. Sheila now knew that nothing 
was settled : after looking at Mrs. Lor- 
raine in the light of these new possibil- 
ities, would she come to him and counsel 
him to go on and challenge a decision ? 

Mr. Mackenzie received with a grave 
dignity and politeness the more than 
friendly welcome given him both by 
Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter, and in 
view of their approaching tour he gave 
them to understand that he had himself 
established somewhat familiar relations 
with foreign countries by reason of his 
meeting with the ships and sailors hail- 


ing from those distant shores. He dis- 
played a profound knowledge of the 
habits and customs and of the natural 
products of many remote lands which 
were much farther afield than a little bit 
of inland Germany. He represented 
the island of Borva, indeed, as a sort of 
lighthouse from which you could survey 
pretty nearly all the countries of the 
world, and broadly hinted that so far 
from insular prejudice being the fruit of 
living in such a place, a general inter- 
course with diverse peoples tended to 
widen the understanding and throw light 
on the various social experiments that 
had been made by the lawgivers, the 
philanthropists, the philosophers of the 
world. 

It seemed to Sheila, as she sat and 
listened, that the pale, calm and clear- 
eyed young lady opposite her was not 
quite so self-possessed as usual. She 
seemed shy and a little self-conscious. 
Did she suspect that she was being ob- 
served, Sheila wondered ? and the rea- 
son ? When dinner was announced she 
took Sheila’s arm, and allowed Mr. In- 
gram to follow them, protesting, into the 
other room, but there was much more of 
embarrassment and timidity than of an 
audacious mischief in her look. She was 
very kind indeed to Sheila, but she had 
wholly abandoned that air of maternal 
patronage which she used to assume to- 
ward the girl. She seemed to wish to be 
more friendly and confidential with her, 
and indeed scarcely spoke a word to In- 
gram during dinner, so persistently did 
she talk to Sheila, who sat next her. 

Ingram got vexed. “Mrs. Lorraine,” 
he said, " you seem to forget that this is 
a solemn occasion. You ask us to a 
farewell banquet, but instead of observ- 
ing the proper ceremonies you pass the 
time in talking about fancy-work and 
music, and other ordinary, every - day 
trifles.” 

“ What are the ceremonies ?” she said. 

“Well,” he answered, “you need not 
occupy the time with crochet — ” 

“ Mrs. Lavender and I are very well 
pleased to talk about trifles.” 

“ But I am not,” he said bluntly, “ and 
I am not going to be shut out by a con- 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


237 


spiracy. Come, let us talk about your 
journey.” 

‘‘Will my lord give his commands as 
to the point at which we shall start the 
conversation ?” 

“You may skip the Channel.” 

“ I wish I could,” she remarked with 
a sigh. 

“We shall land you in Paris. How are 
we to know that you have arrived safely ?” 

She looked embarrassed for a moment, 
and then said, “ If it is of any conse- 
quence for you to know, I shall be 
writing in any case to Mrs. Lavender 
about some little private matter.” 

Ingram .did not receive this promise 
with any great show of delight. "You 
see,” he said, somewhat glumly, "if I 
am to meet you anywhere, I should like 
to know the various stages of your route, 
so that I could guard against our missing 
each other.” 

“You have decided to go, then ?” 

Ingram, not looking at her, but look- 
ing at Sheila, said, “Yes;” and Sheila, 
despite all her efforts, could not help 
glancing up with a brief smile and blush 
of pleasure that were quite visible to ev- 
erybody. 

Mrs. Lorraine struck in with a sort of 
nervous haste: “Oh, that will be very 
pleasant for mamma, for she gets rather 
tired of me at times when we are travel- 
ing. Two women who always read the 
same sort of books, and have the same 
opinions about the people they meet, and 
have precisely the same tastes in every- 
thing, are not very amusing companions 
for each other. You want a little discus- 
sion thrown in.” 

“And if we meet Mr. Ingram we are 
sure to have that,” Mrs. Kavanagh said 
benignly. 

“And you want somebody to give you 
new opinions and put things differently, 
you know. I am sure mamma will be 
most kind to you if you can make it 
convenient to spend a few days with us, 
Mr. Ingram.” 

“And I have been trying to persuade 
Mr. Mackenzie and this young lady to 
come also,” said Ingram. 

"Oh, that would be delightful !" Mrs. 
I Lorraine cried, suddenly taking Shei- 


la’s hand. “You will come, won’t you ? 
We should have such a pleasant party. 

I am sure your papa would be most in- 
terested ; and we are not tied to any route : 
we should go wherever you pleased.” 

She would have gone on beseeching 
and advising, but she saw something in 
Sheila’s face which told her that all her 
efforts would be unavailing. 

“ It is very kind of you,” Sheila said, 
“but I do not think I can go to the 
Tyrol.” 

“ Then you shall go back to the Lewis, 
Sheila,” her father said. 

“ I cannot go back to the Lewis, papa,” 
she said simply; and at this point In- 
gram, perceiving how painful the discus- 
sion was for the girl, suddenly called 
attention to the hour, and asked Mrs. 
Kavanagh if all her portmanteaus were 
strapped up. 

They drove in a body down to the 
station, and Mr. Ingram was most as- 
siduous in supplying the two travelers 
with an abundance of everything they 
could not possibly want. He got them 
a reading-lamp, though both of them 
declared they never read in a train. He 
got them some eau-de-cologne, though 
they had plenty in their traveling-case. 
He purchased for them an amount of 
miscellaneous literature that would have 
been of benefit to a hospital, provided 
the patients were strong enough to bear 
it. And then he bade them good-bye 
at least half a dozen times as the train 
was slowly moving out of the station, 
and made the most solemn vows about 
meeting them at Bregenz. 

“Now, Sheila,” he said, “shall we go 
to the theatre ?” 

“ I do not care to go unless you wish,” 
was the answer. 

“She does not care to go anywhere 
now,” her father said ; and then the girl, 
seeing that he was rather distressed about 
her apparent want of interest, pulled her- 
self together and said cheerfully, “ Is it 
not too late to go to a theatre ? And I 
am sure we could be very comfortable 
at home. Mairi, she will think it unkind 
if we go to the theatre by ourselves.” 

“Mairi!” said her father impatiently, 
for he never lost an opportunity of indi- 


238 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


rectly justifying Lavender. Mairi has 
more sense than you, Sheila, and she 
knows that a servant-lass has to stay at 
home, and she knows that she is ferry 
different from you ; and she is a ferry 
good girl whatever, and hass no pride, 
and she does not expect nonsense in go- 
ing about and such things.” 

“ I am quite sure, papa, you would 
rather go home and sit down and have 
a talk with Mr. Ingram, and a pipe and 
a little whisky, than go to any theatre.” 

“What I would do! And what I 
would like !” said her father in a vexed 
way. “ Sheila, you have no more sense 
as a lass that wass still at the school. 1 
want you to go to the theatre and amuse 
yourself, instead of sitting in the house 
and thinking, thinking, thinking. And 
all for what ?” 

“ But if one has something to be sorry 
for, is it not better to think of it ?” 

“And what hef you to be sorry for?” 
said her father in amazement, and for- 
getting that, in his diplomatic fashion, 
he had been accustoming Sheila to the 
notion that she too might have erred 
grievously and been in part responsible 
for all that had occurred. 

“ I have a great deal to be sorry for, 
papa,” she said ; and then she renewed 
her entreaties that her two companions 
should abandon their notion of going to 
a theatre, and resolve to spend the rest 
of the evening in what she consented to 
call her home. 

After all, they found a comfortable 
little company when they sat round the 
fire, which had been lit for cheerfulness 
rather than for warmth, and Ingram 
at least was in a particularly pleasant 
mood. For Sheila had seized the oppor- 
tunity, when her father had gone out of 
the room for a few minutes, to say sud- 
denly, “ Oh, my dear friend, if you care 
for her, you have a great happiness be- 
fore you.” 

“ Why, Sheila !” he said, staring. 

“ She cares for you more than you can 
think : I saw it to-night in everything 
she said and did.” 

“ I thought she was just a trifle saucy, 
do you know. She shunted me out of 
the conversation altogether.” 


Sheila shook her head and smiled : 
“She was embarrassed. She suspects 
that you like her, and that I know it, 
and that I came to see her. If you ask 
her to marry you, she will do it gladly.” 

“Sheila,” Ingram said with a severity 
that was not in his heart, “you must not 
say such things. You might make fear- 
ful mischief by putting these wild notions 
into people’s heads.” 

“ They are not wild notions,” she said 
quietly. “A woman can tell what an- 
other woman is thinking about better 
than a man.” 

“ And am I to go to the Tyrol and ask 
her to marry me ?” he said swith the air 
of a meek scholar. 

“ I should like to see you married — 
very, very much indeed,” Sheila said. 

"And to her ?” 

“Yes to her,” the girl said frankly. 
“For I am sure she has great regard for 
you, and she is clever enough to put 
value on — on — But I cannot flatter 
you, Mr. Ingram.” 

“Shall I send you word about what 
happens in the Tyrol?” he said, still 
with the humble air of one receiving 
instructions. 

“Yes.” 

“And if she rejects me, what shall I 
do ?” 

“She will not reject you.” 

“Shall I come to you for consolation, 
and ask you what you meant by driving 
me on such a blunder?” 

“ If she rejects you,” Sheila said with 
a smile, “it will be your own fault, and 
you will deserve it. For you are a little 
too harsh with her, and. you have too 
much authority, and I am surprised that 
she will be so amiable under it. Be- 
cause, you know, a woman expects to 
be treated with much gentleness and 
deference before she has said she will 
marry. She likes to be entreated, and 
coaxed, and made much of, but instead 
of that you are very overbearing with 
Mrs. Lorraine.” 

“I did not mean to be, Sheila,” he 
said, honestly enough. “ If anything of 
the kind happened it must have been in 
a joke.” 

“ Oh no, not a joke,” Sheila said ; “ and 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


239 


I have noticed it before— the very first 
evening you came to their house. And 
perhaps you did not know of it yourself; 
and then Mrs. Lorraine, she is clever 
enough to see that you did not mean 
to be disrespectful. But she will expect 
you to alter that a great deal if you ask 
her to marry you ; that is, until you are 
married.” 

“ Have I ever been overbearing to you, 
Sheila?” he asked. 

“To me? Oh no. You have always 
been very gentle to me ; but I know how 
that is. When you first knew me I was 
almost a child, and you treated me like 
a child; and ever since then it has 
always been the same. But to others — 
yes, you are too unceremonious ; and 
Mrs. Lorraine will expect you to be much 
more mild and amiable, and you must 
let her have opinions of her own.” 

‘‘Sheila, you give me to understand 
that I am a bear,” he said in tones of 
injured protest. 

Sheila laughed : “ Have I told you the 
truth at last ? It was no matter so long 
as you had ordinary acquaintances to 
deal with. But now, if you wish to marry 
that pretty lady, you must be much mere 
gentle if you are discussing anything 
with her ; and if she says anything that 
is not very wise, you must not say blunt- 
ly that it is foolish, but you must smooth 
it away, and put her right gently, and 
then she will be grateful to you. But if 
you say to her, ‘ Oh, that is nonsense !’ 
as you might say to a man,, you will hurt 
her very much. The man would not 
care — he would think you were stupid to 
have a different opinion from him ; but 
a woman fears she is not as clever as 
the man she is talking to, and likes his 
good opinion ; and if he says something 
careless like that, she is sensitive to it, 
and it wounds her. To-night you con- 
tradicted Mrs. Lorraine about the h in 
those Italian words, and I am quite sure 
you were wrong. She knows Italian 
much better than you do, and yet she 
yielded to you very prettily.” 

‘‘Go on, Sheila, go on,” he said with 
a resigned air. “ What else did I 
do ?” 

“Oh, a great many rude things. You 
16 


should not have contradicted Mrs. Kav- 
anagh about the color of an amethyst.” 

“ But why ? You know she was wrong ; 
and she said herself a minute afterward 
that she was thinking of a sapphire.” 

“But you ought not to contradict a 
person older than yourself,” said Sheila 
sententiously. 

“Goodness gracious me! Because 
one person is born in one year, and one 
in another, is that any reason why you 
should say that an amethyst is blue ? 
Mr. Mackenzie, come and talk to this 
girl. She is trying to pervert my prin- 
ciples. She says that in talking to a 
woman you have to abandon all hope 
of being accurate, and that respect for 
the truth is not to be thought of. Be- 
cause a woman has a pretty face she is 
to be allowed to say that black is white, 
and white pea-green. And if you Say 
anything to the contrary, you are a brute, 
and had better go and bellow by your- 
self in a wilderness.” 

“Sheila is quite right,” said old Mac- 
kenzie at a venture. 

“ Oh, do you think so ?” Ingram asked 
coolly. “Then I can understand how 
her moral sentiment has been destroyed, 
and it is easy to see where she has got a 
set of opinions that strike at the very roots 
of a respectable and decent society.” 

“ Do you know,” said Sheila seriously, 
“that it is very rude of you to say so, 
even in jest ? If you treat Mrs. Lor- 
raine in this way — ” 

She suddenly stopped. Her father 
had not heard, being busy among his 
pipes. So the subject was discreetly 
dropped, Ingram reluctantly promising 
to pay some attention to Sheila’s precepts 
of politeness. 

Altogether, it was a pleasant evening 
they had, but when Ingram had left, Mr. 
Mackenzie said to his daughter, “ Now, 
look at this, Sheila. When Mr. Ingram 
goes away from London, you hef no 
friend at all then in the place, and you 
are quite alone. Why will you not come 
to the Lewis, Sheila ? It is no one there 
will know anything of what has hap- 
pened here; and Mairi she is a good 
girl, and she will hold her tongue.” 

“ They will ask me why I come back 


240 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


without my husband,” Sheila said, look- 
ing down. 

“Oh, you will leave that all to me,” 
said her father, who knew he had surely 
sufficient skill to thwart the curiosity of 
a few simple creatures in Borva. “ There 
is many a girl hass to go home for a 
time while her husband he is away on 
his business ; and there will no one hef 
the right to ask you any more than I 
will tell them ; and I will tell them what 
they should know — oh yes, I will tell 
them ferry well — and you will hef no 
trouble about it. And, Sheila, you are 
a good lass, and you know that I hef 
many things to attend to that is not easy 
to write about — ” 

“I do know that, papa,” the girl said, 
“and many a time have I wished you 
would go back to the Lewis.” 

“And leave you here by yourself? 
Why, you are talking foolishly, Sheila. 
But now, Sheila, you will see how you 
could go back with me ; and it would 
be a ferry different thing for you run- 
ning about in the fresh air than shut up 
in a room in the middle of a town. And 
you are not looking ferry well, my lass, 
and Scarlett she will hef to take the 
charge of you.” 

“ I will go to the Lewis with you, papa, 
when you please,” she said, and he was 
glad and proud to hear her decision ; 
but there was no happy light of antici- 
pation in her eyes, such as ought to have 
been awakened by this projected jour- 
ney to the far island which she had 
known as her home. 

And so it was that one rough and blus- 
tering afternoon the Clansman steamed 
into Stornoway harbor, and Sheila, cast- 
ing timid and furtive glances toward 
the quay, saw Duncan standing there, 
with the wagonette some little distance 
back under charge of a boy. Duncan 
was a proud man that day. He was 
the first to shove the gangway on to the 
vessel, and he was the first to get on 
board ; and in another minute Sheila 
found the tall, keen-eyed, brown-faced 
keeper before her, and he was talking 
in a rapid and eager fashion, throwing 
in an occasional scrap of Gaelic in the 
mere hurry of his words. 


“Oh yes, Miss Sheila, Scarlett she is 
ferry well whatever, but there is nothing 
will make her so well as your coming 
back to sa Lewis ; and we wass saying 
yesterday that it looked as if it wass 
more as three or four years, or six years, 
since you went away from sa Lewis, 
but now it iss no time at all, for you are 
just the same Miss Sheila as we knew 
before ; and there is not one in all Borva 
but will think it iss a good day this day 
that you will come back.” 

“Duncan,” said Mackenzie with an 
impatient stamp of his foot, “why will 
you talk like a foolish man ? Get the 
luggage to the shore, instead of keeping 
us all the day in the boat.” 

“Oh, ferry well, Mr. Mackenzie,” said 
Duncan, departing with an injured air, 
and grumbling as he went, “it iss no 
new thing to you to see Miss Sheila, and 
you will have no thocht for any one but 
yourself. But I will get out the lug- 
gage — oh yes, I will get out the luggage.” 

Sheila, in truth, had but little. luggage 
with her, but she remained on board the 
boat until Duncan was quite ready to 
start, for she did not wish just then to 
meet any of her friends in Stornoway. 
Then she stepped ashore and crossed 
the quay, and got into the wagonette ; 
and the two horses, whom she had ca- 
ressed for a moment, seemed to know 
that they were carrying Sheila back to 
her own country, from the speed with 
which they rattled out of the town and 
away into the lonely moorland. 

Mackenzie let them have their way. 
Past the solitary lakes they went, past 
the long stretches of undulating morass, 
past the lonely sheilings perched far up 
on the hills ; and the rough and bluster- 
ing wind blew about them, and- the gray 
clouds hurried by, and the old, strong- 
bearded man who shook the reins and 
gave the horses their heads could have 
laughed aloud in his joy that he was 
driving his daughter home. But Sheila 
— she sat there as one dead ; and Mairi, 
timidly regarding her, wondered what 
the impassable face and the bewildeied, 
sad eyes meant. Did she not smell the 
sweet strong smell of the heather ? Had 
she no interest in the great birds that 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


241 


were circling in the air over by the Bar- 
bhas mountains ? Where was the pleas- 
ure she used to exhibit in remembering 
the curious names of the small lakes they 
passed ? 

And lo ! the rough gray day broke 
asunder, and a great blaze of fire ap- 
peared in the west, shining across the 
moors and touching the blue slopes of 
the distant hills. Sheila was getting 
near to the region of beautiful sunsets 
and lambent twilights and the constant 
movement and mystery of the sea. Over- 
head the heavy clouds were still hurried 
on by the wind ; and in the south the 
eastern slopes of the hills and the moors 
were getting to be of a soft purple ; but 
all along the west, where her home was, 
lay a great flush of gold, and she knew 
that Loch Roag was shining there, and 
the gable of the house at Borvabost get- 
ting warm in the beautiful light. 

“ It is a good afternoon you will be 
getting to see Borva again,” her father 
said to her ; but all the answer she made 
was to ask her father not to stop at Gar- 
ra-na-hina, but to drive straight on to 
Callernish. She would visit the people 
at Garra-na-hina some other day. 

The boat was waiting for them at Cal- 
lernish, and the boat was the Maighdean- 
mhara. 

44 How pretty she is ! How have you 
kept her so well, Duncan ?” said Sheila, 
her face lighting up for the first time as 
she went down the path to the bright- 
painted little vessel that scarcely rocked 
in the water below. 

"Bekaas we nefler knew but that it 
was this week, or the week before, or the 
next week you would come back, Miss 
Sheila, and you would want your boat ; 
but it wass Mr. Mackenzie himself, it 
wass he that did all the pentin of the 
boat ; and it iss as well done as Mr. Mc- 
Nicol could have done it, and a great 
deal better than that mirover.” 

‘‘Won’t you steer her yourself, Shei- 
la?” her father suggested, glad to see 
that she was at last being interested and 
pleased. 

“Oh yes, I will steer her, if I have 
not forgotten all the points that Duncan 
taught me.” 


"And I am sure you hef not done 
that, Miss Sheila,” Duncan said, “for 
there wass no one knew Loch Roag bet- 
ter as you, not one, and you hef not been 
so long away; and when you tek the til- 
ler in your hand it will all come back to 
you, just as if you wass going away from 
Borva the day before yesterday.” 

She certainly had not forgotten, and 
she was proud and pleased to see how 
well the shapely little craft performed its 
duties. They had a favorable wind, and 
ran rapidly along the opening channels, 
until in due course they glided into the 
well-known bay over which, and shin- 
ing in the yellow light from the sunset, 
they saw Sheila’s home. 

Sheila had escaped so far the trouble 
of meeting friends, but she could not 
escape her friends in Borvabost. They 
had waited for her for hours, not know- 
ing when the Clansman might arrive 
at Stornoway ; and now they crowded 
down to the shore, and there was a great 
shaking of hands, and an occasional 
sob from some old crone, and a thousand 
repetitions of the familiar “And are you 
ferry well, Miss Sheila ?” from small 
children who had come across from the 
village in defiance of mothers and fa- 
thers. And Sheila’s face brightened in- 
to a wonderful gladness, and she had a 
hundred questions to ask for one answer 
she got, and she did not know what to 
do with the number of small brown fists 
that wanted to shake hands with her. 

"Will you let Miss Sheila alone?” 
Duncan called out, adding something 
in Gaelic which came strangely from a 
man who sometimes reproved his own 
master for swearing. “Get away with 
you, you brats : it wass better you would 
be in your beds than bothering people 
that wass come all the way from Styor- 
noway.” 

Then they all went up in a body to 
the house, and Scarlett, who had neither 
eyes, ears nor hands but for the young 
girl who had been the very pride of her 
heart, was nigh driven to distraction by 
Mackenzie’s stormy demands for oatcake 
and glasses and whisky. Scarlett an- 
grily remonstrated with her husband for 
allowing this rabble of people to interfere 


242 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


with the comfort of Miss Sheila ; and 
Duncan, taking her reproaches with 
great good -humor, contented himself 
with doing her work, and went and got 
the cheese and the plates and the whisky, 
while Scarlett, with a hundred endearing 
phrases, was helping Sheila to take off 
her traveling things. And Sheila, it 
turned out, had brought with her in her 
portmanteau certain huge and wonder- 
ful cakes, not of oatmeal, from Glasgow ; 
and these were soon on the great table 
in the kitchen, and Sheila herself dis- 
tributing pieces to those small folks who 
were so awestricken by the sight of this 
strange dainty that they forgot her in- 
junctions and thanked her timidly in 
Gaelic. 

"Well, Sheila my lass,” said her fath- 
er to her as they stood at the door of 
the house and watched the troop of their 
friends, children and all, go over the 
hill to Borvabost in the red light of the 
sunset, "and are you glad to be home 
again ?” 

"Oh yes,” she said heartily enough; 
and Mackenzie thought that things were 
going on favorably. 

"You hef no such sunsets in the South, 
Sheila,” he observed, loftily casting his 
eye around, although he did not usually 
pay much attention to the picturesque- 
ness of his native island. "Now look 
at the light on Suainabhal. Do you see 
the red on the water down there, Sheila ? 
Oh yes, I thought you w’ould say it wass 
ferry beautiful — it is a ferry good color 
on the water. The water looks ferry 
well when it is red. You hef no such 
things in London — not any, Sheila. Now 
we must go in-doors, for these things you 
can see any day here, and we must not 
keep our friends waiting.” 

An ordinary, dull-witted or careless 
man might have been glad to have a 
little quiet after so long and tedious a 
journey, but Mr. Mackenzie was no such 
person. He had resolved to guard 
against Sheila’s first evening at home 
being in any way languid or monoto- 
nous, and so he had asked one or tw'O 
of his especial friends to remain and 
have supper with them. Moreover, he 
did not wish the girl to spend the rest of 


the evening out of doors when the mel- 
ancholy time of the twilight drew over 
the hills and the sea began to sound re- 
mote and sad. Sheila should have a 
comfortable evening in-doors ; and he 
would himself, after supper, when the 
small parlor was well lit up, sing for her 
one or two songs, just to keep the thing 
going, as it were. He would let nobody 
else sing. These Gaelic songs were not 
the sort of music to make people cheer- 
ful. And if Sheila herself would sing 
for them ? 

And Sheila did. And her father chose 
the songs for her, and they were the 
blithest he could find, and the girl seem- 
ed really in excellent spirits. They had 
their pipes and their hot whisky and wa- 
ter in this little parlor ; Mr. Mackenzie 
explaining that although his daughter 
was accustomed to spacious and gilded 
drawing-rooms where such a thing was 
impossible, she would do anything to 
make her friends welcome and comfort- 
able, and they might fill their glasses 
and their pipes with impunity. And 
Sheila sang again and again, all cheerful 
and sensible English songs, and she lis- 
tened to the odd jokes and stories her 
friends had to tell her ; and Mackenzie 
was delighted with the success of his 
plans and precautions. Was not her 
very appearance now a triumph ? She 
was laughing, smiling, talking to every 
one : he had not seen her so happy for 
many a day. 

In the midst of it all, when the night 
had come apace, what was this wild skirl 
outside that made everybody start ? Mac- 
kenzie jumped to his feet, with an angry 
vow in his heart that if this "teffie of a 
! piper John ” should come down the hill 
j playing "Lochaber no more” or "Cha 
i till mi tualadh ” or any other mournful 
tune, he would have his chanter broken ] 
in a thousand splinters over his head. ! 
But what was the wild air that came \ 
nearer and nearer, until John marched j 
into the house, and came, with ribbons | 
and pipes, to the very door of the room, ] 
which was flung open to him ? Not a 
very appropriate air, perhaps, for it was 

The Campbells are coming, oho ! oho ! 

The Campbells are coming, oho 1 oho ! 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


243 


The Campbells are coming to bonny Lochleven ! 

The Campbells are coming, oho 1 oho 1 

But it was, to Mr. Mackenzie’s rare de- 
light, a right good joyous tune, and it 
was meant as a welcome to Sheila ; and 
forthwith he caught the white-haired 
piper by the shoulder and dragged him 
in, and said, “Put down your pipes and 
come into the house, John — put down 
your pipes and tek off your bonnet, and 
we shall hef a good dram together this 
night, by Kott ! And it is Sheila herself 
will pour out the whisky for you, John ; 


and she is a good Highland girl, and 
she knows the piper was never born that 
could be*hurt by whisky, and the whisky 
was never yet made that could hurt a 
piper. What do you say to that, John ?” 

John did not answer : he was standing 
before Sheila with his bonnet in his hand, 
but with his pipes still proudly over his 
shoulder. And he took the glass from 
her and called out “Shlainte!” and 
drained every drop of it out to welcome 
Mackenzie’s daughter home. 










CHAPTER XXV. 

THE VOYAGE OF THE PIICEBE. 


RT XI. 


I T was a cold morning in January, and 
up here among the Jura hills the clouds 
had melted into a small and chilling rain 
that fell ceaselessly. The great “Paps 
of Jura” were hidden in the mist; even 
the valleys near at hand were vague and 
dismal in the pale fog ; and the Sound 
of Islay, lying below, and the far sea be- 
yond, were gradually growing indistin- 
guishable. In a rude little sheiling, built 
on one of the plateaus of rock, Frank 
Lavender sat alone, listening to the plash- 
ing of the rain without. A rifle that he 
had just carefully dried lay across his 
knees. A brace of deer-hounds had 
stretched out their paws on the earthen 
floor, and had put their long noses be- 
tween their paws to produce a little 
warmth. It was indeed a cold and damp 
morning, and the little hut was pervaded 
with a smell of wet wood and also of 
peat-ashes, for one of the gillies had 
tried to light a fire, but the peats had 
gone out. 

It was Lavender who had let the fire 
go out. He had forgotten it. He was 
thinking of other things — of a song, 
mostly, that Sheila used to sing, and 
lines of it went hither and thither through 
his brain as he recalled the sound of her 
voice : 

Haste to thy barque, 

Coastwise steer not : 

Sail wide of Mull, 

Jura near not ! 

F arewell, she said. 

Her last pang subduing, 

Brave Mac Intyre, 

Costly thy wooing ! 

There came into the sheiling a little, 
wiry old keeper, with shaggy gray hair 
and keen black eyes. “ Cosh bless me !” 
he said petulantly as he wrung the rain 
out of his bonnet, “you hef let the peats 
go out, Mr. Lavender, and who will tell 
when the rain will go off?” 

“It can’t last long, Neil. It came on 


too suddenly for that. I thought we were 
going to get one fine day when we start- 
ed this morning, but you don’t often 
manage that here, Neil.” 

“Indeed no, sir,” said Neil, who was 
not a native of Jura, and was as eager 
as any one to abuse the weather prevail- 
ing there : “ it is a ferry bad place for the 
weather. If the Almichty were to tek 
the sun away a’ tagether, it would be 
days and weeks and days before you 
would find it oot. But it iss a good thing, 
sir, you will get the one stag before the 
mist came down ; and he is not a stag, 
mirover, but a fine big hart, and a royal, 
too, and I hef not seen many finer in the 
Jura hills. Oh yes, sir, when he wass 
crossing the burn I made out his points 
ferry well, and I wass saying to myself, 
‘ Now, if Mr. Lavender will get this one, 
it will be a grand day this day, and it 
will make up for many a wet day among 
the hills.’ ” 

“They haven’t come back with the 
pony yet ?” Lavender asked, laying down 
his gun and going to the door of the hut. 

“Oh no,” Neil said, following him. 
“ It iss a long way to get the powny, and 
maybe they will stop at Mr. MacDou- 
gall’s to hef a dram. And Mr. Mac- 
Dougall was saying to me yesterday that 
the ferry next time you wass shoot a 
royal, he would hef the horns dressed 
and the head stuffed to make you a. pres- 
ent, for he is ferry proud of the picture 
of Miss Margaret ; and he will say to me 
many’s sa time that I wass to gif you the 
ferry best shooting, and not to be afraid 
of disturbing sa deer when you had a 
mind to go out. And I am not sure, sir, 
we will not get another stag to tek down 
with us yet, if the wind would carry away 
the mist, for the rain that is nearly off 
now ; and as you are ferry wet, sir, 
already, it is no matter if we go down 
through the glen and cross the water to 
get the side of Ben Bheulah.” 

“ That is true enough, Neil, and I fancy 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


245 


the clouds are beginning to lift. And 
there they come with the pony.” 

Neil directed his glass toward a small 
group that appeared to be coming up the 
side of the valley below them, and that 
was still at some considerable distance. 

“Cosh bless me!” he cried, ‘‘what is 
that? There iss two strangers — oh yes 
indeed, and mirover — and there is one 
of them on the pony.” 

Lavender’s heart leaped within him. 
If they were strangers, they were coming 
to see him, and how long was it since he 
had seen the face of any one of his old 
friends and companions ? It seemed to 
him years. 

‘‘ Is it a man or a woman on the pony, 
Neil ?” he asked hurriedly, with some 
wild fancy flashing through his brain. 
‘‘Give me the glass.” 

‘‘Oh, it is a man,” said Neil, handing 
over the glass. “ What would a woman be 
doing up sa hills on a morning like this ?” 

The small party below came up out 
of the gray mist, and Lavender in the 
distance heard a long view-halloo. 

‘‘Cott tarn them !” said Neil at a ven- 
ture. ‘‘There is not a deer on Benan 
Cabrach that will not hear them.” 

“ But if these strangers are coming to 
see me, I fear we must leave the deer 
alone, Neil.” 

‘‘Ferry well, sir, ferry well, sir: it is a 
bad day whatever, and it is not many 
strangers will come to Jura. I suppose 
they hef come to Port Ascaig, and taken 
the ferry across the sound.” 

“ I am going to meet them on chance,” 
lavender said ; and he set off along the 
side of the deep valley, leaving Neil with 
the dogs and the rifles. 

“ Hillo, Johnny !” he cried in amaze- 
ment when he came upon the advancing 
group. “And you too, Mosenberg ! By 
Jove, how did you ever get here ?” 

There was an abundance of hand- 
shaking and incoherent questions when 
young Mosenberg jumped down on the 
wet heather and the three friends had 
actually met. Lavender scarcely knew 
what to say, these two faces were so 
strange, and yet so familiar — their ap- 
pearance there was so unexpected, his 
pleasure so great. 


“ I can’t believe my eyes yet, Johnny 
Why did you bring him here ? Don’t 
you know what you’ll have to put up 
with in this place ? Well, this does do a 
fellow’s heart good ! I am awfully pleased 
to see you, and it is very kind of you.” 

“But I am very cold,” the handsome 
Jew-boy said, swinging his arms and 
stamping his feet. “Wet boats, wet 
carts, wet roads, wet saddles, and every- 
where cold, cold, cold — ” 

“And he won’t drink whisky ; so what 
is he to expect ?” Johnny Eyre said. 

“Come along up to a little hut here,” 
Lavender said, “ and we’ll try to get a 
fire lit. And I have some brandy there.” 

“And you have plenty of water to mix 
with it, ’’ said the boy, looking mournfully 
around. “Very good. Let us have the 
fire and the warm drink ; and then — 
You know the story of the music that 
was frozen in the trumpet, and that all 
came out when it was thawed at a fire ? 
When we get warm we have veiy great 
news to tell you — oh, very great news 
indeed.” 

“I don’t want any news — I want your 
company. Come along, like good fel- 
lows, and leave the news for afterward. 
The men are going on with a pony to 
fetch a stag that has been shot: they 
won’t be back for an hour, I suppose, at 
the soonest. This is the sheiling up here 
where the brandy is secreted. Now, Neil, 
help us to get up a blaze. If any of you 
have newspapers, letters or anything that 
will set a few sticks on fire — ” 

“ I have a box of wax matches,” John- 
ny said, “and I know how to light a 
peat-fire better than any man in the 
country.” 

He was not very successful at first, for 
the peats were a trifle damp ; but in the 
end he conquered, and a very fair blaze 
was produced, although the smoke that 
filled the sheiling had nearly blinded 
Mosenberg’s eyes. Then Lavender pro- 
duced a small tin pot and a solitary tum- 
bler, and they boiled some water and lit 
their pipes, and made themselves seats 
of peat round the fire. All the while a 
brisk conversation was going on, some 
portions of which astonished Lavender 
considerably. 


246 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


For months back, indeed, he had al- 
most cut himself off from the civilized 
■world. His address was known to one 
or two persons, and sometimes they sent 
him a letter ; blit he was a bad correspond- 
ent. The news of his aunt’s death did 
not reach him till a fortnight after the 
funeral, and then it was by a singular 
chance that he noticed it in the columns 
of an old newspaper. “That is the only 
thing I regret about coming away,” he 
was saying to these two friends of his. 
“ I should like to have seen the old wo- 
man before she died : she was very kind 
to me.” 

“ Well,” said Johnny Eyre, with a shake 
of the head, “that is all very well ; but a 
mere outsider like myself — you see, it 
looks to me a little unnatural that she 
should go and leave her money to a mere 
friend, and not to her own relations.” 

“I am very glad she did,” Lavender 
said. “I had as good as asked her to 
do it long before. And Ted Ingram 
will make a better use of it than I ever 
did.” 

“It is all very well for you to say so 
now, after all this fuss about those two 
pictures ; but suppose she had left you 
to starve ?” 

“Never mind suppositions,” Lavender 
said, to get rid of the subject. “Tell 
me, Mosenberg, how is that overture of 
yours getting on ?” 

“It is nearly finished,” said the lad 
with a flush of pleasure, “and I have 
shown it in rough to two or three good 
friends, and — shall I tell you? — it may 
be performed at the Crystal Palace. But 
that is a chance. And the fate of it, that 
is also a chance. But you — you have 
succeeded all at once, and brilliantly, 
and all the world is talking of you ; and 
yet you go away among mountains, and 
live in the cold and wet, and you might 
as well be dead.” 

“What an ungrateful boy it is !” Lav- 
ender cried. “Here you have a com- 
fortable fire, and hot brandy-and-water, 
and biscuits, and cigars if you wish ; and 
you talk about people wishing to leave 
these things and die ! Don’t you know 
that in half an hour’s time you will see 
that pony come back with a deer — a royal 


hart — slung across it ? and won’t you be 
proud when MacDougall takes you out 
and gives you a chance of driving home 
such a prize ? Then you will carry the 
horns back to London, and you will have 
them put up, and you will discourse to 
your friends of the span and the pearls 
of the antlers and the crockets. To- 
night after supper you will see the horns 
and the head brought into the room, and 
if you fancy that you yourself shot the 
stag, you will see that this life among the 
hills has its compensations.” 

“It is a very cold life,” the lad said, 
passing his hands over the fire. 

“ That is because you won’t drink any- 
thing,” said Johnny Eyre, against whom 
no such charge could be brought. “And 
don’t you know that the drinking of 
whisky is a provision invented by Na- 
ture to guard human beings like you and 
me from cold and wet? You are flying 
in the face of Providence if you don’t 
drink whisky among the Scotch hills.” 

“And have you people to talk to?” 
said Mosenberg, looking at Lavender 
with a vague wonder, for he could not 
understand why any man should choose 
such a life. 

“Not many.” 

“What do you do on the long even- 
ings when you are by yourself?” 

“Well, it isn’t very cheerful, but it 
does a man good service sometimes to 
be alone for a time : it lets him find him- 
self out.” 

“You ought to be up in London, to 
hear all the praise of the people about 
your two pictures. Every one is talking 
of them : the newspapers, too. Have 
you seen the newspapers?” 

“ One or two. But all I know of these 
two pictures is derived from offers for- 
warded me by the secretary at the ex- 
hibition-rooms. I was surprised when I 
got them at first. But never mind them. 
Tell me more about the people one used 
to know. What about Ingram now ? 
Has he cut the Board of Trade ? Does 
he drive in the Park ? Is he still in his 
rooms in Sloane street ?” 

“Then you have had no letters from 
him ?” Mosenberg said with some sur- 
prise. 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


247 


“No. Probably he does not know 
where I am. In any case — ” 

“ But he is going to be married !” Mo- 
senberg cried. “ You did not know that ? 
And to Mrs. Lorraine.” 

“You don’t say so ? Why, he used to 
hate her ; but that was before he knew 
her. To Mrs. Lorraine ?” 

“Yes. And it is amusing. She is so 
proud of him. And if he speaks at the 
table, she will turn away from you, as if 
you were not worth listening to, and 
have all her attention for him. And 
whatever is his opinion, she will defend 
that, and you must not disagree with her. 
Oh, it is very amusing!” and the lad 
laughed and shook back his curls. 

“It is an odd thing,” Lavender said; 
“ but many a time, long before Ingram 
ever saw Mrs. Lorraine, I used to im- 
agine these two married. I knew she 
was just the sort of clever, independent, 
clear-headed woman to see Ingram’s 
strong points, and rate them at their 
proper value. But I never expected 
anything of the sort, of course ; for I had 
always a notion that some day or other 
he would be led into marrying some 
pretty, gentle and soft-headed young 
thing, whom he would have to take 
through life in a protecting sort of way, 
and who would never be a real compan- 
ion for him. So he is to many Mrs. 
Lorraine, after all ? Well, he won’t be- 
come a man of fashion, despite all his 
money. He is sure to start a yacht, for 
one thing. And they will travel a deal. 
I suppose I must write and congratulate 
him.” 

“ I met them on the day I went to see 
your picture,” Mosenberg said. “Mrs. 
Lorraine was looking at it a long time, 
and at last she came back and said, 

‘ The sea in that picture makes me feel 
cold.’ That was a compliment, was it 
not ? Only you cannot get a good view 
very often, for the people will not stand 
back from the pictures. But every one 
asks why you did not keep these two 
over for the Academy.” 

“ I shall have other two for the Acad- 
emy, I hope.” 

‘‘Commissions ?” Johnny asked with a 
practical air. 


“No. I have had some offers, but I 
prefer to leave the thing open. But you 
have not told me how you got here yet,” 
Lavender added, continually breaking 
away from the subject of the pictures. 

“In the Phoebe,” Eyre said. 

“ Is she in the bay ?” 

“ Oh no. We had to leave her at Port 
Ellen to get a few small repairs done, 
and Mosenberg and I came on by road 
to Port Ascaig. Mind you, she was quite 
small enough to come round the Mull at 
this time of year.” 

“I should think so. What’s your 
crew ?” 

“Two men and a lad, besides Mosen- 
berg and myself ; and I can tell you we 
had our hands full sometimes.” 

“You’ve given up open boats with 
stone ballast now,” Lavender said with' 
a laugh. 

“ Rather. But it was no laughing mat/ 
ter,” Eyre added, with a sudden gravity 
coming over his face. “ It was the nar- 
rowest squeak I ever had, and I don’t 
know now how I clung on to that place 
till the day broke. When I came to my- 
self and called out for you, I never ex- 
pected to hear you answer ; and in the 
darkness, by Jove ! your voice sounded 
like the voice of a ghost. How you 
managed to drag me so far up that sea- 
weed I can’t imagine ; and then the dip- 
ping down and under the boat — !” 

“It was that dip down that saved 
me,” Lavender said. “It brought me 
to, and made me scramble like a rat 
up the other side as soon as I felt my 
hands on the rock again. It was a nar- 
row squeak, as you say, Johnny. Do 
you remember how black the place look- 
ed when the first light began to show in 
the sky? and how we kept each other 
awake by calling ? and how you called 
‘ Hurrah !’ when we heard Donald ? and 
how strange it was to find ourselves so 
near the mouth of the harbor, after all ? 
During the night I fancied we must have 
been thrown on Battle Island, you know.” 

“I do not like to hear about that,” 
young Mosenberg said. “And always, 
if the wind came on strong or if the 
skies grew black, Eyre would tell me all 
the story over again when we were in 


248 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


this boat coming down by Arran and 
Cantyre. Let us go out and see if they 
come with the deer. Has the rain stop- 
ped ?” 

At this moment, indeed, sounds of the 
approaching party were heard, and when 
Lavender and his friends went to the 
door the pony, with the deer slung on to 
him, was just coming up. It was a suf- 
ficiently picturesque sight — the rude little 
sheiling with its peat-fire, the brown and 
wiry gillies, the slain deer roped on to 
the pony, and all around the wild mag- 
nificence of hill and valley clothed in 
moving mists. The rain had indeed 
cleared off, but these pale white fogs still 
clung around the mountains and render- 
ed the valleys vague and shadowy. Lav- 
ender informed Neil that he would make 
no further effort that day : he gave the 
men a glass of whisky all round, and 
then, with his friends, he proceeded to 
make his way down to the small white 
cottage fronting the Sound of Islay which 
had been his home for months back. 

Just before setting off, however, he 
managed to take young Mosenberg aside 
for a moment. “ I suppose,” he said, 
with his eyes cast down — 11 1 suppose you 
heard something from Ingram of — of 
Sheila?” 

“Yes,” said the lad, rather bashfully, 
“ Ingram had heard from her. She was 
still in Lewis.” 

‘‘And well ?” 

“ I think so — yes,” said Mosenberg ; 
and then he added, with some hesitation, 
‘‘ I should like to speak to you about it 
when we have the opportunity. There 
were some things that Mr. Ingram said 
— I am sure he would like you to know 
them.” 

‘‘There was no message to me ?” Lav- 
ender asked in a low voice. 

‘‘From her? No. But it was the 
opinion of Mr. Ingram — ” 

‘‘Oh, never mind that, Mosenberg,” 
said the other, turning away wearily. 
“ I suppose you won’t find it too fatiguing 
to walk from here back ? It will warm 
you, you know, and the old woman down 
there will get you something to eat. You 
may make it luncheon or dinner, as you 
lik?, for it will be nearly two by the time 


you get down. Then you can go for a 
prowl round the coast : if it does not rain 
I shall be working as long as there is 
daylight. Then we can have a dinner 
and supper combined in the evening. 
You will get venison and whisky.” 

“ Don’t you ever have anything else ?” 

‘‘Oh yes. The venison will be in 
honor of you : I generally have mutton 
and whisky.” 

‘‘Look here, Lavender,” the lad said, 
with considerable confusion, ‘‘the fact is, 
Eyre and I — we brought you a few things 
in the Phoebe — a little wine, you know, 
and some such things. To-morrow, if 
you could get a messenger to go down 
to Port Ellen — But no, I suppose we 
must go and work the boat up the sound.” 

“ If you do that, I must go with you,” 
Lavender said, ‘‘for the chances are that 
your skipper doesn’t know the currents 
in the sound ; and they are rather peculiar, 
I can tell you. So Johnny and you have 
brought me some wine ? I wish we had 
it now, to celebrate your arrival, for I 
am afraid I can offer you nothing but 
whisky.” 

The old Highland woman who had 
chargp of the odd little cottage in which 
Lavender lived was put into a state of 
violent consternation by the arrival of 
these two strangers; but as Lavender 
said he would sleep on a couple of chairs 
and give his bed to Mosenberg and the 
sofa to Eyre, and as Mosenberg declared 
that the house was a marvel of neatness 
and comfort, and as Johnny assured her 
that he had frequently slept in a her- 
ring-barrel, she grew gradually pacified. 
There was a little difficulty about plates 
and knives and forks at luncheon, which 
consisted of cold mutton and two bottles 
of ale that had somehow been overlook- 
ed ; but all these minor inconveniences 
were soon smoothed over, and then Lav- 
ender, carrying his canvas under his 
arm and a portable easel over his shoul- 
der, went down to the shore, bade his 
companions good-bye for a couple of 
hours, and left them to explore the wind- 
ing and rocky coast of Jura. 

In the evening they had dinner in a 
small parlor which was pretty well filled 
with a chest of drawers, a sofa and a 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


249 


series of large canvases. There was a 
peat-fire burning in the grate and two 
candles on the table, but the small room 
did not get oppressively hot, for each 
time the door was opened a draught of 
cold sea-air rushed in from the passage, 
sometimes blowing out one of the can- 
dles, but always sweetening the atmo- 
sphere. Then Johnny had some fine 
tobacco with him, and Mosenberg had 
brought Lavender a present of a meer- 
schaum pipe, and presently a small ket- 
tle of hot water was put in requisition, 
and the friends drew round the fire. 

“Well, it is good of you to come and 
see a fellow like this,” Lavender said 
with a very apparent and hearty grati- 
tude in his face : “I can scarcely believe 
my eyes that it is true. And can you 
make any stay, Johnny ? Have you 
brought your colors with you ?” 

“Oh no, I don’t mean to work,” John- 
ny said. “ I have always had a fancy 
for a mid-winter cruise. It’s a harden- 
ing sort of thing, you know. You soon 
get used to it, don’t you, Mosenberg ?” 
And Johnny grinned. 

“Not yet — I may afterward,” said the 
lad. “ But at present this is more com- 
fortable than being on deck at night 
when it rains and you know not where 
you are going.” 

“But that was only your own per- 
versity. You might just as well have 
stopped in the cabin, and played that 
cornopean, and made yourself warm and 
comfortable. Really, Lavender, it’s very 
good fun, and if you only watch for 
decent weather you can go anywhere. 
Fancy our coming round the Mull with 
/ the Phoebe yesterday ! And we had 
quite a pleasant trip across to Islay.” 

“And where do you propose to go 
after leaving Jura ?” Lavender asked. 

“Well, you know, the main object of 
our cruise was to come and see you. 
But if you care to come with us for a few 
days, we will go wherever you like.” 

“ If you are going farther north, I must 
go with you,” Lavender said, “for you 
are bound to drown yourself some day, 
Johnny, if some one doesn’t take care 
of you.” 

There was no deep design in this 


project of Johnny’s, but he had had a 
vague impression that Lavender might 
like to go north, if only to have a passing 
glimpse at the island he used to know. 

“One of my fellows is well acquainted 
with the Hebrides,” he said. “If you 
don’t think it too much of a risk, I should 
like it myself, for those northern islands 
must look uncommonly wild and savage 
in winter, and one likes to have new ex- 
periences. Fancy, Mosenberg, what ma- 
terial you will get for your next piece : it 
will be full of storms and seas and thun- 
der. You know how the wind whistles 
through the overture to the Dicnnants de 
la Couronne." 

“It will whistle through us,” said the 
boy with an anticipatory shiver, “but I 
do not mind the wind if it is not wet. It 
is the wet that makes a boat so disagree- 
able. Everything is so cold and clam- 
my : you can touch nothing, and when 
you put your head up in the morning, 
pah ! a dash of rain and mist and salt 
water altogether gives you a shock.” 

“What made you come round the 
Mull, Johnny, instead of cutting through 
the Crinan ?” Lavender asked of his 
friend. 

“Well,” said the youth modestly, 
“nothing except that two or three men 
said we couldn’t do it.” 

“ I thought so,” Lavender said. “And 
I see I must go with you, Johnny. You 
must play no more of these tricks. You 
must watch your time, and run her quiet- 
ly up the Sound of Jura to Crinan ; and 
watch again, and get her up to Oban ; 
and watch again, and get her up to Loch 
Sligachan. Then you may consider. It 
is quite possible you may have fine, clear 
weather if there is a moderate north-east 
wind blowing — ” 

“A north-east wind !” Mosenberg cried. 

“Yes,” Lavender replied confidently, 
for he had not forgotten what Sheila 
used to teach him: “that is your only 
chance. If you have been living in fog > 
and rain for a fortnight, you will never 
forget your gratitude to a north-easter 
when it suddenly sets in to lift the clouds 
and show you a bit of blue sky. But it 
may knock us about a bit in crossing the 
Minch.” 


250 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


“We have come round the Mull, and 
we can go anywhere,” Johnny said. “I’d 
back the Phoebe to take you safely to the 
West Indies : wouldn’t you, Mosenberg?” 

“ Oh no,” the boy said. “ I would back 
her to take you, not to take me.” 

Two or three days thereafter the Phoebe 
was brought up the sound from Port El- 
len, and such things as were meant as a 
present to Lavender were landed. Then 
the three friends embarked, for the weath- 
er had cleared considerably, and there 
was indeed, when they set out, a pale, 
wintry sunshine gleaming on the sea 
and on the white deck and spars of the 
handsome little cutter which Johnny com- 
manded. The Phoebe was certainly a 
great improvement on the crank craft in 
which he used to adventure his life on 
Loch Fyne : she was big enough, indeed, 
to give plenty of work to everybody on 
board of her, and when once she had 
got into harbor and things put to rights, 
her chief state-room proved a jolly and 
comfortable little place enough. They 
had some pleasant evenings in this way 
after the work of the day was over, when 
the swinging lamps shone down on the 
table that was furnished with glasses, 
bottles, cigars and cards. Johnny was 
very proud of being in command and 
of his exploit in doubling the Mull. He 
was continually consulting charts and 
compasses, and going on deck to com- 
municate his last opinion to his skipper. 
Mosenberg, too, was getting better ac- 
customed to the hardships of yachting, 
and learning how to secure a fair amount 
of comfort. Lavender never said that 
he wished to go near Lewis, but there 
was a sort of tacit understanding that 
their voyage should tend in that direction. 

They had a little rough weather on 
reaching Skye, and in consequence re- 
mained in harbor a couple of days. At 
the end of that time a happy opportunity 
presented itself of cutting across the Lit- 
tle Minch — the Great Minch was con- 
sidered a trifle risky — to Loch Maddy in 
North Uist. They were now in the West- 
ern Islands, and strange indeed was the 
appearance which the bleak region pre- 
sented at this time of the year — the lone- 
ly coasts, the multitudes of wild fowl, the 


half-savage, wondering inhabitants, the 
treeless wastes and desolate rocks. What 
these remote and melancholy islands 
might have looked like in fog and 
misty rain could only be imagined, how- 
ever, for, fortunately, the longed - for 
north-easter had set in, and there were 
wan glimmerings of sunshine across the 
sea and the solitary shores. They re- 
mained in Loch Maddy but a single day, 
and then, still favored by a brisk north- 
east breeze, made their way through the 
Sound of Harris and got to leeward of 
the conjoint island of Harris and Lewis. 
There, indeed, were the great mountains 
which Lavender had seen many a time 
from the north, and now they were close 
at hand, and dark and forbidding. The 
days were brief at this time, and they 
were glad to put into Loch Resort, which 
Lavender had once seen in company with 
old Mackenzie when they had come into 
the neighborhood on a salmon-fishing 
excursion. 

The Phoebe was at her anchorage, the 
clatter on deck over, and Johnny came 
below to see what sort of repast could be 
got for the evening. It was not a very 
grand meal, but he said, “ I propose that 
we have a bottle of champagne to cele- 
brate our arrival at the island of Lewis. 
Did you ever see anything more success- 
fully done ? And now, if this wind con- 
tinues, we can creep up to-morrow to 
Loch Roag, Lavender, if you would like 
to have a look at it.” 

For a moment the color forsook Lav- 
ender’s face. “ No, thank you, Johnny,” 
he was about to say, when his friend in- 
terrupted him : “ Look here, Lavender : 
I know you would like to see the place, 
and you can do it easily without being 
seen. No one knows me. When we 
anchor in the bay, I suppose Mr. Mac- 
kenzie — as is the hospitable and praise- 
worthy custom in these parts — will send 
a message to the yacht and ask us to 
dine with him. I, at any rate, can go up 
and call on him, and make excuses for 
you; and then I could tell you, you 
know — ” Johnny hesitated. 

“Would you do that for me, Johnny?” 
Lavender said. “Well, you are a good 
fellow !” 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


251 


“Oh,” Johnny said lightly, “it’s a 
capital adventure for me ; and perhaps 
I could ask Mackenzie — Mr. Mackenzie : 
I beg your pardon — to let me have two 
or three clay pipes, for this brier-root is 
rapidly going to the devil.” 

“ He will give you anything he has in 
the house : you never saw such a hos- 
pitable fellow, Johnny. But you must 
take great care what you do.” 

“You trust to me. In the mean time 
let’s see what Pate knows about Loch 
Roag.” 

Johnny called down his skipper, a 
bluff, short, red-faced man, who present- 
ly appeared, his cap in his hand. 

“Will you have a glass of champagne, 
Pate ?” 

“ Oh ay, sir,” he said, not very eagerly. 

“Would you rather have a glass of 
whisky ?” 

“Well, sir,” Pate said, in accents that 
showed that his Highland pronunciation 
had been corrupted by many years’ resi- 
dence in Greenock, “I was thinkin’ the 
whisky was a wee thing better for ye on 
a cauld nicht.” 

“ Here you are, then ! Now, tell me, 
do you know Loch Roag ?” 

“Oh ay, fine. Many’s the time I hiv 
been in to Borvabost.” 

“But,” said Lavender, “do you know 
the loch itself? Do you know the bay 
on which Mackenzie’s house stands ?” 

“Weel, I’m no sae sure aboot that, 
sir. But if ye want to gang there, we 
can pick up some bit body at Borvabost 
that will tak’ us round.” 

“Well,” Lavender said, “I think I can 
tell you how to go. I know the channel 
is quite simple — there are no rocks about 
— and once you are round the point you 
will see your anchorage.” 

“It’s twa or three years since I was 
there, sir,” Pate remarked as he put the 
glass back on the table : “ I mind there 
was a daft auld man there that played 
the pipes.” 

“That was old John the Piper,” Lav- 
ender said. “Don’t you remember Mr. 
Mackenzie, whom they call the King of 
Borva ?” 

“Weel, sir, I never saw him, but I 
was aware he was in the place. I have 


never been up here afore wi’ a party o’ 
gentlemen, and he wasna coming down 
to see the like 0’ us.” 

With what a strange feeling Lavender 
beheld, the following afternoon, the open- 
ing to the great loch that he knew so 
well ! He recognized the various rocky 
promontories, the Gaelic names of which 
Sheila had translated for him. Down 
there in the south were the great heights 
of Suainabhal and Cracabhal and Mea- 
lasabhal. Right in front was the sweep 
of Borvabost Bay, and its huts and its 
small garden patches ; and up beyond it 
was the hill on which Sheila used to sit 
in the evening to watch the sun go down 
behind the Atlantic. It was like enter- 
ing again a world with which he had 
once been familiar, and in which he had 
left behind a peaceful happiness he had 
sought in vain elsewhere. Somehow, as 
the yacht dipped to the waves and slow- 
ly made her way into the loch, it seemed 
to him that he was coming home — that 
he was returning to the old and quiet 
joys he had experienced there — that all 
the past time that had darkened his life 
was now to be removed. But when, at 
last, he saw Mackenzie’s house high up 
there over the tiny bay, a strange thrill 
of excitement passed through him, and 
that was followed by a cold feeling of 
despair, which he did not seek to remove. 

He stood on the companion, his head 
'only being visible, and directed Pate 
until the Phoebe had arrived at her moor- 
ings, and then he went below. He had 
looked wistfully for a time up to the 
square, dark house, with its scarlet cop- 
ings, in the vague hope of seeing some 
figure he knew ; but now, sick at heart 
and fearing that Mackenzie might make 
him out with a glass, he sat down in the 
state-room, alone and silent and miser- 
able. 

He was startled by the sound of oars, 
and got up and listened. Mosenberg 
came down and said, “Mr. Mackenzie 
has sent a tall, thin man — do you know 
him ? — to see who we are, and whether 
we will go up to his house.” 

“What did Eyre say?” 

“ I don’t know. I suppose he is going.” 

Then Johnny himself came below. 


252 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


He was a sensitive young fellow, and at 
this moment he was very confused, ex- 
cited and nervous. “ Lavender,” he said, 
stammering somewhat, ‘‘I am going up 
now to Mackenzie’s house. You know 
whom I shall see : shall I take any mes- 
sage — if I see a chance — if your name 
is mentioned — a hint, you know — ” 

“Tell her — ” Lavender said, with a 
sudden pallor of determination in his 
face ; but he stopped, and said abruptly, 
‘‘Never mind, Johnny: don’t say any- 
thing about me.” 

“Not to-night, anyway,” Johnny said 
to himself as he drew on his best blue 
jacket with its shining brass buttons, and 
went up the companion to see if the 
small boat was ready. 

Johnny had had a good deal of knock- 
ing about the Western Highlands, and 
was familiar with the frank and ready 
hospitality which the local lairds — more 
particularly in the remote islands, where 
a stranger brought recent newspapers 
and a breath of the outer world with 
him — granted to all comers who bore 
with them the credentials of owning a 
yacht. But never before had he gone 
up to a strange house with such pertur- 
bation of spirit. He had been so anx- 
ious, too, that he had left no time for 
preparation. When he started up the 
hill he could see, in the gathering dusk, 
that the tall keeper had just entered the 
house, and when he arrived there he 
found absolutely nobody about the place. 

In ordinary circumstances he would 
simply have walked in and called some 
one from the kitchen. But he now felt 
himself somewhat of a spy, and was not 
a little afraid of meeting the handsome 
Mrs. Lavender of whom he had heard 
so much. There was no light in the 
passage, but there was a bright-red gloom 
in one of the windows, and almost in- 
advertently he glanced in there. What 
was this strange picture he saw ? The 
red flame of the fire showed him the 
grand figures on the walls of Sheila’s 
dining-room, and lit up the white table- 
cover and the crystal in the middle of 
the apartment. A beautiful young girl, 
clad in a tight blue dress, had just risen 
from beside the fire to light two candles 


that were on the table ; and then she 
went back to her seat and took up her 
sewing, but not to sew. For Johnny saw 
her gently kneel down beside a little 
bassinet that was a mass of wonderful 
pink and white, and he supposed the 
door in the passage was open, for he 
could hear a low voice humming some 
lullaby-song sung by the young mother 
to her child. He went back a step, be- 
wildered by what he had seen. Could 
he fly down to the shore, and bring Lav- 
ender up to look at this picture through 
the window, and beg of him to go in 
and throw himself on her forgiveness 
and mercy ? He had not time to think 
twice. At this moment Mairi appeared 
in the dusky passage, looking a little 
scared, although she did not drop the 
plates she carried : “Oh, sir, and are you 
the gentleman that has come in the yacht ? 
And Mr. Mackenzie, he is up stairs just 
now, but he will be down ferry soon ; 
and will you come in and speak to Miss 
Sheila ?” 

“ Miss Sheila /” he repeated to him- 
self with amazement ; and the next mo- 
ment he found himself before this beau- 
tiful young girl, apologizing to her, stam- 
mering, and wishing that he had never 
undertaken such a task, while he knew 
that all the time she was calmly regard- 
ing him with her large, calm and gentle 
eyes, and that there was no trace of em- 
barrassment in her manner. 

“Will you take a seat by the fire until 
papa comes down ?” she said. “ We are 
very glad to have any one come to see 
us : we do not have many visitors in the 
winter.” 

“But I am afraid,” he stammered: “I 
am putting you to trouble;” and he 
glanced at the swinging pink and white 
couch. 

“Oh no,” Sheila said with a smile, “ I 
was just about to send my little boy to 
bed.” 

She lifted the sleeping child and rolled 
it in some enormous covering of white 
and silken-haired fur, and gave the small 
bundle to Mairi to carry to Scarlett. 

“Stop a bit!” Johnny called out to 
Mairi ; and the girl started and looked 
round, whereupon he said to Sheila, with 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


much blushing, “Isn’t there a supersti- 
tion about an infant waking to find silver 
in its hand ? I am sure you wouldn’t 
mind my — ” 

“ He cannot hold anything yet,” Sheila 
said with a smile. 

“Then, Mairi, you must put this below 
his pillow : is not that the same thing for 
luck ?” he said, addressing the young 
Highland girl as if he had known her 
all his life ; and Mairi went away proud 
and pleased to have this precious bundle 
to carry, and talking to it with a thousand 
soft and endearing phrases in her native 
tongue. 

Mackenzie came in and found the two 
talking together. “How do you do, sir ?’ ’ 
he said with a grave courtesy. “You are 
ferry welcome to the island, and if there 
is anything you want for the boat you 
will hef it from us. She is a little thing 
to hef come so far.” 

“ She’s not very big,” Johnny said, “ but 
she’s a thorough good sailor ; and then 
we watch our time, you know. But I 
don’t think we shall go farther north 
than Lewis.” 

“Hef you no friends on board with 
you ?” Mackenzie asked. 

“Oh yes,” Johnny answered — “two. 
But we did not wish to invade your house 
in a body. To-morrrow — ” 

“To-morrow!” said Mackenzie impa- 
tiently: “no, but to-night !— Duncan, 
come here ! Duncan, go down to the 
boat that has just come in and tell the 
gentlemen—” 

“ I beg your pardon, sir,” Johnny cried* 
“but my two friends are regularly done 
up, tired : they were just going to turn 
in when I left the yacht. To-morrow, 
now, you will see them.” 

“Oh, ferry well, ferry well,” said Mac- 
kenzie, who had hoped to have a big 
dinner - party for Sheila’s amusement. 
“ In any way, you will stop and hef some 
dinner? It is just ready — oh yes — and 
it is not a ferry fine dinner, but it will be 
different from your cabin for you to sit 
ashore.” 

“Well, if you will excuse me — ” John- 
ny was about to say, for he was so full 
of the news that he had to tell that he 
would have sacrificed twenty dinners to 


253 

get off at this moment. But Mr. Mac- 
kenzie would take no denial. An ad- 
ditional cover was laid for the stranger, 
and Johnny sat down to stare at Sheila 
in a furtive way, and to talk to her father 
about everything that was happening in 
the great world. 

“And what now is this,” said Mac- 
kenzie with a lofty and careless air — 
“what is this I see in the papers about 
pictures painted by a gentleman called 
Lavender ? I hef a great interest in these 
exhibitions: perhaps you hef seen the 
pictures ?” 

Johnny blushed very red, but he hid 
his face over his plate, and presently he 
answered, without daring to look at Sheila, 
“ I should think I have seen them ! Why, 
if you care for coast-landscapes, I can 
tell you you never saw such thorough 
good work all your life ! Why every- 
body’s talking of them : you never heard 
of a man making such a name for him- 
self in so short a time.” 

He ventured to look up. There was 
a strange, proud light in the girl’s face, 
and the effect of it on this bearer of good 
tidings was to make him launch into such 
praises of these pictures as considerably 
astonished old Mackenzie. As for Sheila, 
she was proud and happy, but not sur- 
prised. She had known it all along. 
She had waited for it patiently, and it 
had come at last, although she was not 
to share in his triumph. 

“ I know some people who know him,” 
said Johnny, who had taken two or three 
glasses of Mackenzie’s sherry and felt 
bold ; “ and what a shame it is he should 
go away from all his friends and almost 
cease to have any communication with 
them ! And then, of all the places in the 
world to spend a winter in, Jura is about 
the very — ” 

“Jura!” said Sheila quickly, and he 
fancied that her face paled somewhat. 

“I believe so,” he said: “somewhere 
on the western coast, you know, over the 
Sound of Islay.” 

Sheila was obviously very much agi- 
tated, but her father said in a careless 
way, “Oh yes, Jura is not a ferry good 
place in the winter. And the west side, 
you said ? Ay, there are not many houses 


2 54 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


on the west side : it is not a ferry good 
place to live in. But it will be ferry cheap, 
whatever.” 

“ I don’t think that is the reason of his 
living there,” said Johnny with a laugh. 

“But,” Mackenzie urged, rather anx- 
iously, “you wass not saying he would 
get much for these pictures? Oh no, 
who will give much money for pictures 
of rocks and sea-weed ? Oh no!” 

“Oh, won’t they, though?” Johnny 
cried. “ They give a good deal more for 
that sort of picture now than for the old- 
fashioned cottage-scenes, with a young 
lady dressed in a drugget petticoat and 
a pink jacket sitting peeling potatoes. 
Don’t you make any mistake about that. 
The public are beginning to learn what 
real good work is, and, by Jove ! don’t 
they pay for it, too ? Lavender got eight 
hundred pounds for the smaller of the 
two pictures I told you about.” 

Johnny Eyre was beginning to forget 
that the knowledge he was showing of 
Frank Lavender’s affairs was suspicious- 
ly minute. 

“Oh no, sir,” Mackenzie said with a 
frown. “It is all nonsense the stories 
that you hear. I hef had great experi- 
ence of these exhibitions. I hef been to 
London several times, and every time I 
wass in the exhibitions.” 

“ But I should know something of it, 
too, for I am an artist myself.” 

“ And do you get eight hundred pounds 
for a small picture ?” Mackenzie asked 
severely. 

“Well, no,” Johnny said with a laugh. 
“But then I am a duffer.” 

After dinner Sheila left the room : 
Johnny fancied he knew where she was 
going. He pulled in a chair to the fire, 
lit his pipe, and said he would have but 
one glass of toddy, which Mackenzie 
proceeded to make for him. And then 
he said to the old King of Borva, “ I beg 
your pardon, sir, but will you allow me 
to suggest that that young girl who was 
in here before dinner should not call your 
daughter Miss Sheila before strangers?” 

“Oh, it is very foolish,” said Mac- 
kenzie, “but it is an old habit, and they 
will not stop it. And Duncan, he is 
worse than any one.” 


“Duncan, I suppose, is the tall fellow 
who waited at dinner?” 

“Oh ay, that is Duncan.” 

Johnny’s ingenious bit of stratagem had 
failed. He wanted to have old Mackenzie 
call his daughter Mrs. Lavender, so that 
he might have had occasion to open the 
question and plead for his friend. But 
the old man resolutely ignored the re- 
lationship between Lavender and his 
daughter so far as this stranger was con- 
cerned, and so Johnny had to go away 
partly disappointed. 

But another opportunity might occur, 
and in the mean time was hot he carry- 
ing rare news down to the Phoebe ? He 
had lingered too long in the house, but 
now he made up for lost time, and once 
or twice nearly missed his footing in run- 
ning down the steep path. He had to 
find the small boat for himself, and go 
out on the slippery stones and sea-weed 
to get into her. Then he pulled away 
from the shore, his oars striking white 
fire into the dark water, the water gurg- 
ling at the bow. Then he got into the 
shadow of the black hull of the yacht, 
and Pate was there to lower the little 
gangway. 

When Johnny stepped on deck he 
paused, in considerable doubt as to what 
he should do. He wished to have a 
word with Lavender alone: how could 
he go down with such a message as he 
had to deliver to a couple of fellows 
probably smoking and playing chess ? 

“Pate,” he said, “tell Mr. Lavender I 
$vant him to come on deck for a minute.” 

“He’s by himsel’, sir,” Pate said. 
“He’s been sitting by himsel’ for the 
last hour. The young gentleman’s lain 
doon.” 

Johnny went down into the little cab- 
in. Lavender, who had neither book 
nor cigar, nor any other sign of occupa- 
tion near him, seemed in his painful 
anxiety almost incapable of asking the 
question that rose to his lips. “Have 
you seen her, Johnny ?” he said at length, 
with his face looking strangely care- 
worn. 

Johnny was an impressionable young 
fellow. There were tears running freely 
down his cheeks as he said, “ Yes I have, 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


255 


Lavender, and she was rocking a child 
in a cradle.” 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

REDINTEGRATIO AMORIS. 

That same night Sheila dreamed a 
strange dream, and it seemed to her that 
an angel of God came to her and stood 
before her, and looked at her with his 
shining face and his sad eyes. And he 
said, ‘‘Are you a woman, and yet slow 
to forgive ? Are you a mother, and have 
you no love for the father of your child ?” 
It seemed to her that she could not an- 
swer. She fell on her knees before him, 
and covered her face with her hands and 
wept. And when she raised her eyes 
again the angel was gone, and in his 
place Ingram was there, stretching out 
his hand to her and bidding her rise and 
be comforted. Yet he, too, spoke in the 
same reproachful tones, and said, ‘‘What 
would become of us all, Sheila, if none 
of our actions were to be condoned by 
time and repentance ? What would be- 
come of us if we could not say, at some 
particular point of our lives, to the by- 
gone time that we had left it, with all its 
errors and blunders and follies, behind 
us, and would, with the help of God, 
start clear on a new sort of life ? What 
would it be if there were no forgetfulness 
for any of us — no kindly veil to come 
down and shut out the memory of what 
we have done — if the staring record were 
to be kept for ever before our eyes ? 
And you are a woman, Sheila : it should 
be easy for you to forgive and to encour- 
age, and to hope for better things of the 
man you love. Has he not suffered 
enough ? Have you no word for him ?” 

The sound of her sobbing in the night- 
time brought her father to the door. He 
tapped at the door, and said, “What is 
the matter, Sheila ?” 

She awoke with a slight cry, and he 
went into the room and found her in a 
strangely troubled state, her hands out- 
stretched to him, her eyes wet and wild : 
“Papa, I have been very cruel. I am 
not fit to live any more. There is no 
woman in the world would have done 
what I have done.” 


“Sheila,” he said, “you hef been dream- 
ing again about all that folly and non- 
sense. Lie down, like a good lass. 
You will wake the boy if you do not lie 
down and go to sleep ; and to-morrow 
we will pay a visit to the yacht that hass 
come in, and you will ask the gentlemen 
to look at the Maighdean-mhara.” 

“Papa,” she said, “to-morrow I want 
you to take me to Jura.” 

“To Jura, Sheila? You cannot go to 
Jura. You cannot leave the baby with 
Mairi, Sheila.” 

“I will take him with me,” she said. 

“Oh, it is not possible at all, Sheila. 
But I will go to Jura — oh yes, I will go 
to Jura. Indeed, I was thinking last 
night that I would go to Jura.” 

“Oh no , you must not go,” she cried. 
“You would speak harshly — and he is 
very proud — and we should never see 
each other again. Papa, I know you 
will do this for me — you will let me go.” 

“ It is foolish of you, Sheila,” her father 
said, “to think that I do not know how 
to arrange such a thing without making 
a quarrel of it. But you will see all 
about it in the morning. Just now you 
will lie down, like a good lass, and go to 
sleep. So good-night, Sheila, and do 
not think of it any more till the morning.” 

She thought of it all through the night, 
however. She thought of her sailing 
away down through the cold wintry seas 
to search that lonely coast. Would the 
gray dawn break with snow, or would 
the kindly heavens lend her some fair 
sunlight as she set forth on her lonely 
quest? And all the night through she 
accused herself of being hard of heart, 
and blamed herself, indeed, for all that 
had happened in the bygone time. Just 
as the day was coming in she fell asleep, 
and she dreamed that she went to the 
angel whom she had seen before, and 
knelt down at his feet and repeated in 
some vague way the promises she had 
made on her marriage morning. With 
her head bent down she said that she 
would live and die a true wife if only 
another chance were given her. The 
angel answered nothing, but he smiled 
with his sad eyes and put his hand for a 
moment on her head, and then disap- 


17 


256 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


peared. When she woke Mairi was in 
the room silently stealing away the child, 
and the white daylight was clear in the 
windows. 

She dressed with trembling hands, and 
yet there was a faint suffused sense of 
joy in her heart. She wondered if her 
father would keep to his promise of the 
night before, or whether it had been 
made to get her to rest. In any case 
she knew that he could not refuse her 
much ; and had not he himself said that 
he had intended going away down to 
Jura? 

“Sheila, you are not looking well this 
morning,” her father said : “it is foolish 
of you to lie awake and think of such 
things. And as for what you wass say- 
ing about Jura, how can you go to Jura ? 
We hef no boat big enough for that. I 
could go — oh yes, / could go — but the 
boat I would get at Stornoway you could 
not go in at all,- Sheila ; and as for the 
baby — ” 

“But then, papa,” she said, “did not 
the gentleman who was here last night 
say they were going back by Jura ? And 
it is a big yacht, and he has only two 
friends on board. He might take us 
down.” 

“You cannot ask a stranger, Sheila. 
Besides, the boat is too small a one for 
this time of the year. I should not like 
to see you go in her, Sheila.” 

“ I have no fear,” the girl said. 

“No fear !” her father said impatiently. 
" No, of course you hef no fear : that is 
the mischief. You will tek no care of 
yourself whatever.” 

“When is the young gentleman coming 
up this morning?” 

“ Oh, he will not come up again till I 
go down. Will you go down to the boat, 
Sheila, and go on board of her ?” 

Sheila assented, and some half hour 
thereafter she stood at the door, clad in 
her tight-fitting blue serge, with the hat 
and sea-gull’s wing over her splendid 
masses of hair. It was an angry-looking 
morning enough: rags of gray cloud 
were being hurried past the shoulders of 
Suainabhal ; a heavy surf was beating 
on the shore. 

“There is going to be rain, Sheila,” 


her father said, smelling the moisture 
in the keen air. “Will you hef your 
waterproof?” 

“Oh no,” she said, “if I am to meet 
strangers, I cannot wear a waterproof.” 

The sharp wind had brought back the 
color to her cheeks, and there was some 
gladness in her eyes. She knew she 
might have a fight for it before she could 
persuade her father to set sail in this 
strange boat ; but she never doubted for 
a moment, recollecting the gentle face 
and modest manner of the youthful own- 
er, that he would be really glad to do 
her a service, and she knew that her 
father’s opposition would give way. 

“ Shall we take Bras, papa ?” 

“No, no,” her father said: “we will 
hef to go in a small boat. I hope you 
will not get wet, Sheila : there is a good 
breeze on the water this morning.” 

“ I think they are much safer in here 
than going round the islands just at 
present,” Sheila said. 

“Ay, you are right there, Sheila,” her 
father said, looking at the direction of 
the wind. “They got in in ferry good 
time. And they may hef to stay here 
for a while before they can face the sea 
again.” 

“And we shall become very great 
friends with them, papa, and they will 
be glad to take us to Jura,” she said 
with a smile, for she knew there was not 
much of the hospitality of Borvabost be- 
stowed with ulterior motives. 

They went down the steep path to the 
bay, where the Phoebe was lurching and 
heaving in the rough swell, her bowsprit 
sometimes nearly catching the crest of 
a wave. No one was on deck. How 
were they to get on board ? 

“They can’t hear you in this wind,” 
Sheila said. “We will have to haul 
down our own boat.” 

And that, indeed, they had to do, 
though the work of getting the little 
thing down the beach was not very ardu- 
ous for a man of Mackenzie’s build. 

“I am going to pull you out to the 
yacht, papa,” Sheila said. 

“Indeed you will do no such thing,” 
her father said indignantly. “As if you 
wass a fisherman’s lass, and the gentle- 


4 PRINCESS OF THULE. 


257 


men never wass seeing you before ! Sit 
down in the stern, Sheila, and hold on 
ferry tight, for it is a rough water for 
this little boat.” 

They had almost got out indeed to the 
yacht before any one was aware of their 
approach, but Pate appeared in time to 
seize the rope that Mackenzie flung him, 
and with a little scrambling they were 
at last safely on board. The noise of 
their arrival, however, startled Johnny 
Eyre, who was lying on his back smoking 
a pipe after breakfast. He jumped up 
and said to Mosenberg, who was his only 
companion, “Hillo! here’s this old gen- 
tleman come on board. He knows you. 
What’s to be done ?” 

“Done?” said the boy, with a mo- 
ment’s hesitation; and then a flush of 
decision sprang into his face : “Ask him 
to come down. Yes, I will speak to him, 
and tell him that Lavender is on the isl- 
and. Perhaps he meant to go into the 
house : who knows ? If he did not, let 
us make him.” 

“All right!” said Johnny: “let’s go a 
buster.” 

Then he called up the companion to 
Pate to send the gentleman below, while 
he flung a few things aside to make the 
place more presentable. Johnny had 
been engaged a few minutes before in 
sewing a button on a woolen shirt, and 
that article of attire does not look well 
beside a breakfast-table. 

His visitors began to descend the nar- 
row wooden steps, and presently Mac- 
kenzie was heard to say, “Tek great 
care, Sheila : the brass is ferry slippery.” 

“Oh, thunder !” Johnny said, looking 
at Mosenberg. 

“Good-morning, Mr. Eyre,” said the 
old King of Borva, stooping to get into 
the cabin: “it is a rough day you are 
getting. Sheila, mind your head till you 
have passed the door.” 

Mackenzie came forward to shake 
hands, and in doing so caught sight of 
Mosenberg. The whole truth flashed 
upon him in a moment, and he instan- 
taneously turned to Sheila and said quick- 
ly, “ Sheila, go up on deck for a moment.” 

But she, too, had seen the lad, and she 
came forward, with a pale face, but with 


a perfectly self-possessed manner, and 
said, “How do you do ? It is a surprise, 
your coming to the island, but you often 
used to talk of it.” 

“Yes,” he stammered as he shook 
hands with her and her father, “I often 
wished to come here. What a wild place 
it is ! And have you lived here, Mrs. 
Lavender, all the time since you left 
London ?” 

“Yes, I have.” 

Mackenzie was getting very uneasy. 
Every moment he expected Lavender 
would enter this confined little cabin ; 
and was this the place for these two to 
meet, before a lot of acquaintances ? 

“Sheila,” he said, “it is too close for 
you here, and I am going to have a pipe 
with the gentlemen. Now if you wass 
a good lass you would go ashore again, 
and go up to the house, and say to Mairi 
that we will all come for luncheon at one 
o’clock, and she must get some fish up 
from Borvabost. Mr. Eyre, he will send 
a man ashore with you in his own boat, 
that is bigger than mine, and you will 
show him the creek to put into. Now 
go away, like a good lass, and we will 
be up ferry soon — oh yes, we will be up 
directly at the house.” 

“I am sure,” Sheila said to Johnny 
Eyre, “ we can make you more comfort- 
able up at the house than you are here, 
although it is a nice little cabin.” And 
thpn she turned to Mosenberg and said, 
“And we have a great many things to 
talk about.’’ 

“Could she suspect?” Johnny asked 
himself as he escorted her to the boat and 
pulled her in himself to the shore. Her 
face was pale and her manner a trifle 
formal, otherwise she showed no sign. 
He watched her go along the stones till 
she reached the path : then he pulled out 
to the Phoebe again, and went down be- 
low to entertain his host of the previous 
evening. 

Sheila walked slowly up the rude little 
path, taking little heed of the blustering 
wind and the hurrying clouds. Her eyes 
were bent down, her face was pale. 
When she got to the top of the hill she 
looked, in a blank sort of way, all round 
the bleak moorland, but probably she 


2 5 8 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


did not expect to see any one there. 
Then she walked, with rather an uncer- 
tain step, into the house. She looked 
into the room, the door of which stood 
open. Her husband sat there, with his 
arms outstretched on the table and his 
head buried in his hands. He did not 
hear her approach, her footfall was so 
light, and it was with the same silent 
step she went into the room and knelt 
down beside him and put her hands and 
face on his knee, and said simply, “ I beg 
for your forgiveness.” 

He started up and looked at her as 
though she were some spirit, and his own 
face was haggard and strange. “ Sheila,” 
he said in a low voice, laying his hand 
gently on her head, “it is I who ought 
to be there, and you know it. But I 
cannot meet your eyes. I am not going 
to ask for your forgiveness just yet : I 
have no right to expect it. All I want is 
this : if you will let me come and see you 
just as before we were married, and if 
you will give me a chance of winning 
your consent over again, we can at least 
be friends until then. But why do you 
cry, Sheila? You have nothing to re- 
proach yourself with.” 

She rose and regarded him for a mo- 
ment with her streaming eyes, and then, 
moved by the passionate entreaty of her 
face, and forgetting altogether the sepa- 
ration and time of trial he had proposed, 
he caught her to his bosom and kissed 
her forehead, and talked soothingly and 
caressingly to her as if she were a child. 

‘‘I cry,” she said, “because I am hap- 
py — because I believe all that time is 
over — because I think you will be kind 
to me. And I will try to be a good wife 
to you, and you will forgive me all that 
I have done.” 

“You are heaping coals of fire on my 
head, Sheila,” he said humbly. “You 
know I have nothing to forgive. As for 
you, I tell you I have no right to expect 
your forgiveness yet. But I think you 
will find out by and by that my repent- 
ance is not a mere momentary thing. I 
have had a long time to think over what 
has happened, and what I lost when I 
lost you, Sheila.” 

“But you have found me again,” the 


girl said, pale a little, and glad to sit 
down on the nearest couch, while she 
held his hand and drew him toward her. 
“And now I must ask you for one thing.” 

He was sitting beside her : he feared 
no longer to meet the look of those earn- 
est, meek, affectionate eyes. 

“This is it,” she said. “If we are to 
be together — not what we were, but some- 
thing quite different from that — will you 
promise me never to say one word about 
what is past — to shut it out altogether — 
to forget it ?” 

“I cannot, Sheila,” he said. “Am I 
to have no chance of telling you how 
well I know how cruel I was to you — 
how sorry I am for it ?” 

“No,” she said firmly. “If you have 
some things to regret, so have I ; and 
what is the use of competing with each 
other as to which has the most forgive- 
ness to ask for ? Frank dear, you will 
do this for me ? You will promise never 
to speak one word about that time ?” 

How earnest the beautiful, sad face 
was ! He could not withstand the en- 
treaty of the piteous eyes. He said to 
her, abashed by the great love that she 
showed, and hopeless of making other 
reparation than obedience to her gener- 
ous wish, “ Let it be so, Sheila. I will 
never speak a word about it. You will 
see otherwise than in words whether I 
forget what is passed, and your goodness 
in letting it go. But, Sheila,” he added, 
with downcast face, “Johnny Eyre was 
here last night : he told me — ” He had to 
say no more. She took his hand and led 
him gently and silently out of the room. 

Meanwhile the old King of Borva had 
been spending a somewhat anxious time 
down in the cabin of the Phoebe. Many 
and many a day had he been planning 
a method by which he might secure a 
meeting between Sheila and her husband, 
and now it had all come about without 
his aid, and in a manner which rendered 
him unable to take any precautions. He 
did not know but that some awkward 
accident might destroy all the chances 
of the affair. He knew that Lavender 
was on the island. He had frankly ask- 
ed young Mosenberg as soon as Sheila 
had left the yacht. 


A PRINCESS OP THULE. 


259 


“ Oh yes,” the lad said, “ he went away j 
into the island early this morning. I 
begged of him to go to your house : he 
did not answer. But I am sure he will. 

I know he will.” 

‘‘My Kott!” Mackenzie said, ‘‘and he 
has been wandering about the island all 
the morning, and he will be very faint 
and hungry, and a man is neffer in a 
good temper then for making up a quar- 
rel. If I had known the last night, I 
could hef had dinner with you all here, 
and we should hef given him a good 
glass of whisky, and then it wass a good 
time to tek him up to the house.” 

“ Oh, you may depend on it, Mr. Mac- 
kenzie,” Johnny Eyre said, ‘‘that Lav- 
ender needs no stimulus of that sort to 
make him desire a reconciliation. No, 

I should think not. He has done noth- 
ing but brood over this affair since ever 
he left London ; and I should not be 
surprised if you scarcely knew him, he 
is so altered. You would fancy he had 
lived ten years in the time.” 

‘‘Ay, ay,” Mackenzie said, not listen- 
ing very attentively, and evidently think- 
ing more of what might be happening else- 
where ; ‘‘but I was thinking, gentlemen, 
it wass time for us to go ashore and go 
up to the house, and hef something to 
eat.” 

‘‘ I thought you said one o’clock for 
luncheon, sir,” young Mosenberg said. 

“One o’clock!” Mackenzie repeated 
impatiently. “Who the teffle can wait 
till one o’clock if you hef been walking 
about an island since the daylight with 
nothing to eat or drink.” 

Mr. Mackenzie forgot that it was not 
Lavender he had asked to lunch. 

“Oh yes,” he said, “Sheila hass had 
plenty of time to send down to Borva- 
bost for some fish ; and by the time you 
get up to the house you will see that it 
is ready.” 

“Very well,” Johnny said, “we can go 
up to the house, anyway.” 

He went up the companion, and he 
had scarcely got his head above the level 
of the bulwarks when he called back, 

“ I say, Mr. Mackenzie, here is Lavender 
on the shore, and your daughter is with 
him. Do they want to come on board, 


do you think ? Or do they want us to go 
ashore?” 

Mackenzie uttered a few phrases in 
Gaelic, and got up on deck instantly. 
There, sure enough was Sheila, with her 
hand on her husband’s arm, and they 
were both looking toward the yacht. 
The wind was blowing too strong for 
them to call. Mackenzie wanted him- 
self to pull in for them, but this was 
overruled, and Pate was despatched. 

An awkward pause ensued. The three 
standing on deck were sorely perplexed 
as to the forthcoming interview, and as to 
what they should do. Were they to re- 
joice over a reconciliation, or ignore the 
fact altogether and simply treat Sheila 
as Mrs. Lavender? Her father, indeed, 
fearing that Sheila would be strangely 
excited, and would probably burst into 
tears, wondered what he could get to 
scold her about. 

Fortunately, an incident partly ludi- 
crous broke the awkwardness of their 
arrival. The getting on deck was a 
matter of some little difficulty : in the 
scuffle Sheila’s small hat with its snow- 
white feather got unloosed somehow, and 
the next minute it was whirled away by 
the wind into the sea. Pate could not 
be sent after it just at the moment, and 
it was rapidly drifting away to leeward, 
when Johnny Eyre, with a laugh and a 
“Here goes !” plunged in after the white 
feather that was dipping and rising in the 
waves like a sea-gull. Sheila uttered a 
slight cry and caught her husband’s arm. 
But there was not much danger. John- 
ny was an expert swimmer, and in a few 
minutes he was seen to be making his 
way backward with one arm, while in 
the other hand he held Sheila’s hat. 
Then Pate had by this time got the small 
boat round to leeward, and very shortly 
after Johnny, dripping like a Newfound- 
land dog, came on deck and presented 
the hat to Sheila, amidst a vast deal of 
laughter. 

“I am so sorry,” she said; “but you 
must change your clothes quickly: 1 
hope you will have no harm from it.” 

“Not I,” he said, “but my beautiful 
white decks have got rather into a mess. 
I am glad you saw them while they 


26 o 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


were dry, Mrs. Lavender. Now I am 
going below to make myself a swell, for 
we’re all going to have luncheon on 
shore, ain’t we ?” 

Johnny went below very well pleased 
with himself. He had called her Mrs. 
Lavender without wincing. He had got 
over all the awkwardness of a second 
introduction by the happy notion of 
plunging after the hat. He had to con- 
fess, however, that the temperature of 
the sea was not just that he would have 
preferred for a morning bath. 

By and by he made his appearance in 
his best suit of blue and brass buttons, 
and asked Mrs. Lavender if she would 
now come down and see the cabin. 

“I think you want a good glass of 
whisky,” old Mackenzie said as they all 
went below : “ the water it is ferry cold 
just now.” 

“Yes,” Johnny said blushing, “we 
shall all celebrate the capture of the 
hat.” 

It was the capture of the hat, then, 
that was to be celebrated by this friendly 
ceremony. Perhaps it was, but there 
was no mirth now on Sheila’s face. 

“And you will drink first, Sheila,” her 
father said almost solemnly, '“ and you 
will drink to your husband’s health.” 

Sheila took the glass of raw whisky 
in her hand, and looked round timidly. 
“I cannot drink this, papa,” she said. 
“ If you will let me — ” 

“You will drink that glass to your hus- 
band’s health, Sheila,” old Mackenzie 
said with unusual severity. 

“She shall do nothing of the sort if 
she doesn’t like it!” Johnny Eyre cried 
suddenly, not caring whether it was the 
wrath of old Mackenzie or of the devil 
that he was braving ; and forthwith he 
took the glass out of Sheila’s hand and 
threw the whisky on the floor. Then he 
pulled out a champagne bottle from a 
basket and said, “This is what Mrs. Lav- 
ender will drink.” 

Mackenzie looked staggered for a mo- 
ment : he had never been so braved be- 
fore. But he was not in a quarrelsome 
mood on such an occasion ; so he burst 
into a loud laugh and cried, “Well, did 
ever any man see the like o’ that ? Good 


whisky — ferry good whisky — and flung 
on the floor as if it was water, and as if 
there wass no one in the boat that would 
hef drunk it ! But no matter, Mr. Eyre, 
no matter : the lass will drink whatever 
you give her, for she’s a good lass ; and 
if we hef all to drink champagne, that is 
no matter too, but there is a man or two 
up on deck that would not like to know 
the whisky was spoiled.” 

“Oh,” Johnny said, “there is still a 
drop left for them. And this is what you 
must drink, Mrs. Lavender.” 

Lavender had sat down in a corner of 
the cabin, his eyes averted. When he 
heard Sheila’s name mentioned he look- 
ed up, and she came forward to him. 
She said in her simple way, “ I drink this 
to you, my dear husband;” and at the 
same moment the old King of Borva 
came forward and held out his hand, 
and said, “Yes, and by Kott, I drink to 
your health, too, with ferry good will !” 

Lavender started to his feet: “Wait a 
bit, Mr. Mackenzie. I have got some- 
thing to say to you before you ought to 
shake my hand.” 

But Sheila interposed quickly. She 
put her hand on his arm and looked 
into his face. “You will keep your prom- 
ise to me,” she said; and that was an 
end of the matter. The two men shook 
hands : there was nothing said between 
them, then or again, of what was over 
and gone. 

They had a pleasant enough luncheon 
together up in that quaint room with the 
Tyrolese pictures on the wall, and Dun- 
can for once respected old Mackenzie’s 
threats as to what would happen if he 
called Sheila anything but Mrs. Laven- 
der before these strangers. For some 
time Lavender sat almost silent, and an- 
swered Sheila, who continuously talked 
to him, in little else than monosyllables. 
But he looked at her a great deal, some- 
times in a wistful sort of way, as if he 
were trying to recall the various fancies 
her face used to produce in his imag- 
ination. 

“ Why do you look at me so ?” she said 
to him in an undertone. 

“Because I have made a new friend,” 
he said. 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


261 


But when Mackenzie began to talk of 
the wonders of the island and the seas 
around it, and to beg the young yachts- 
men to prolong their stay, Lavender 
joined with a will in that conversation, 
and added his entreaties. 

“ Then you are going to stay ?” Johnny 
Eyre said, looking up. 

“Oh yes,” he answered, as if the al- 
ternative of going back with them had 
not presented itself to him. “For one 
thing, I have got to look out for a place 
where I can build a house. That is what 
I mean to do with my savings just at 
present; and if you would come with 
me, Johnny, and have a prowl round the 
island to find out some pretty little bay 
with a good anchorage in it — for you 
know I am going to steal that Maigh- 
dean-mhara from Mr. Mackenzie — then 
we can begin and make ourselves archi- 
tects, and plan out the place that is to 
be. And then some day — ” 

Mackenzie had been sitting in mute 
astonishment, but he suddenly broke in 
upon his son-in-law: “On this island? 
No, by Kott, you will not do that ! On 
this island ? And with all the people at 
Stornoway? Hoots, no ! that will neffer 
do. Sheila she hass no one to speak to 
on this island, as a young lass should hef ; 
and you, what would you do yourself in 
the bad weather ? But there is Storno- 
way. Oh yes, that is a fine big place, 
and many people you will get to know 
there, and you will hef the newspapers 
and the letters at once ; and there will 
be always boats there that you can go 
to Oban, to Greenock, to Glasgow — any- 
where in the world — whenever you hef 
a mind to do that ; and then when you 
go to London, as you will hef to go 
many times, there will be plenty there to 
look after your house when it is shut up, 
and keep the rain out, and the paint and 
the paper good, more as could be done 
on this island. Oh this island ! — how 
would you live on this island ?” 

The old King of Borva spoke quite 
impatiently and contemptuously of the 
place. You would have thought his life 
on this island was a species of penal 
servitude, and that he dwelt in his soli- 
tary house only to think with a vain long- 


ing of the glories and delights of Storno- 
way. Lavender knew well what prompted 
these scornful comments on Borva. The 
old man was afraid that the island would 
really be too dull for Sheila and her hus- 
band, and that, whereas the easy com- 
promise of Stornoway might be practi- 
cable, to set up house in Borva might lead 
them to abandon the North altogether. 

“ From what I have heard of it from 
Mr. Lavender,” Johnny said with a laugh, 
“ I don’t think this island such a dread- 
ful place; and I’m hanged if I have 
found it so, so far.” 

“But you will know nothing about it 
— nothing whateffer,” said Mackenzie 
petulantly. “You do not know the bad 
weather, when you cannot go down the 
loch to Callernish, and you might hef to 
go to London just then.” 

“Well, I suppose London could wait,” 
Johnny said. 

Mackenzie began to get angry with this 
young man. “You hef not been to Stor- 
noway,” he said severely. 

“No, I haven’t,” Johnny replied with 
much coolness, “ and I don’t hanker after 
it. I get plenty of town life in London ; 
and when I come up to the sea and the 
islands, I’d rather pitch my tent with you, 
sir, than live in Stornoway.” 

“ Oh, but you don’t know, Johnny, how 
fine a place Stornoway is,” Lavender 
said hastily, for he saw the old man was 
beginning to get vexed. “Stornoway is 
a beautiful little town, and it is on the 
sea, too.” 

“And it hass fine houses, and ferry 
many people, and ferry good society 
whatever,” Mackenzie added with some 
touch of indignation. 

“ But you see, this is how it stands, Mr. 
Mackenzie,” Lavender put in humbly. 
“ We should have to go to London from 
time to time, and we should then get 
quite enough of city life, and you might 
find an occasional trip with us not a bad 
thing. But up here I should have to look 
on my house as a sort of workshop. Now, 
with all respect to Stornoway, you must 
admit that the coast about here is a little 
more picturesque. Besides, there’s an- 
other thing. It would be rather more 
difficult at Stornoway to take a rod or a 


262 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


gun out of a morning. Then there would 
be callers, bothering you at your work. 
Then Sheila would have far less liberty 
in going about by herself.” 

“Eighthly and tenthly, you’ve made 
up your mind to have a house here,” 
cried Johnny Eyre with a loud laugh. 

“Sheila says she would like to have a 
billiard-room,” her husband continued. 
“Where could you get that in Storno- 
way ?” 

“And you must have a large room for 
a piano, to sing in and play in,” the young 
Jew-boy said, looking at Sheila. 

“ I should think a one-storied house, 
with a large verandah, would be the best 
sort of thing,” Lavender said, “both for 
the sun and the rain ; and then one 
could have one’s easel outside, you know. 
Suppose we all go for a walk round the 
shore by and by : there is too much of a 
breeze to take the Phoebe down the loch.” 

So the King of Borva was quietly 
overruled, and his dominions invaded in 
spite of himself. Sheila could not go 
out with the gentlemen just then : she 
was to follow in about an hour’s time. 
Meanwhile they buttoned their coats, 
pulled down their caps tight, and set out 
to face the gray skies and the wintry wind. 
Just as they were passing away from the 
house, Mackenzie, who was walking in 
front with Lavender, said in a cautious 
sort of way, “You will want a deal of 
money to build this house you wass 
speaking about, for it will hef to be all 
stone and iron, and ferry strong what- 
ever, or else it will be a plague to you 
from the one year to the next with the 
rain getting in.” 

“ Oh yes,” Lavender said, “ it will have 
to be done well once for all ; and what 
with rooms big enough to paint in and 
play billiards in, and also a bed-room or 
two for friends who may come to stay 
with us, it will be an expensive business. 
But I have been very lucky, Mr. Mac- 
kenzie. It isn’t the money I have, but 
the commissions I am offered, that war- 
rant my going in for this house. I’ll tell 
you about all these things afterward. In 
the mean time I shall have twenty-four 
hundred pounds, or thereabouts, in a 
couple of months.” 


“But you hef more than that now,” 
Mackenzie said gravely. “ This is what 
I wass going to tell you. The money 
that your aunt left, that is yours, every 
penny of it — oh yes, every penny and 
every farthing of it is yours, sure enough. 
For it wass Mr. Ingram hass told me all 
about it ; and the old lady, she wanted 
him to take care of the money for Sheila ; 
but what was the good of the money to 
Sheila ? My lass, she will hef plenty of 
money of her own ; and I wanted to hef 
nothing to do with what Mr. Ingram said ; 
but it wass all no use, and there iss the 
money now for you and for Sheila, every 
penny and every farthing of it.” 

Mackenzie ended by talking in an in- 
jured way, as if this business had serious- 
ly increased his troubles. 

“But you know,” Lavender said with 
amazement — “you know as well as I do 
that this money was definitely left to In- 
gram, and — you may believe me or not 
— I was precious glad of it when I heard 
it. Of course it would have been of 
more use to him if he had not been about 
to marry this American lady.” 

“ Oh, you hef heard that, then ?” Mac- 
kenzie said. 

“Mosenberg brought me the news. 
But are you quite sure about this affair ? 
Don’t you think this is merely a trick 
of Ingram’s to enable him to give the 
money to Sheila ? That would be very 
like him. I know him of old.” 

“Well, I cannot help it if a man will 
tell lies,” said Mackenzie. “But that is 
what he says is true. And he will not 
touch the money — indeed, he will hef 
plenty, as you say. But there it is for 
Sheila and you, and you will be able to 
build whatever house you like. And if 
you was thinking of having a bigger 
boat than the Maighdean-mhara — ” the 
old man suggested. 

Lavender jumped at that notion direct- 
ly. “What if we could get a yacht big 
enough to cruise anywhere in the sum- 
mer months?” he said. “We might 
bring a party of people all the way from 
the Thames to Loch Roag, and cast an- 
chor opposite Sheila’s house. Fancy In- 
gram and his wife coming up like that 
in the autumn ; and I know you could 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


263 


go over to Sir James and get us some 
shooting.” 

Mackenzie laughed grimly : “We will 
see — we will see about that. I think 
there will be no great difficulty about 
getting a deer or two for you ; and as for 
the salmon, there will be one or two left 
in the White Water. Oh yes, we will 
hef a little shooting and a little fishing 
for any of your friends. And as for the 
boat, it will be ferry difficult to get a 
good big boat for such a purpose without 
you wass planning and building one 
yourself ; and that will be better, I think, 
for the yachts now-a-days they are all 
built for the racing, and you will hef a 
boat fifty tons, sixty tons, seventy tons, 
that hass no room in her below, but is 
nothing but a big heap of canvas and 
spars. But if you wass wanting a good, 
steady boat, with good cabins below for 
the leddies, and a good saloon that you 
could hef your dinner in all at once, 
then you will maybe come down with 
me to a shipbuilder I know in Glasgow 
— oh, he is a ferry good man — and we 
will see what can be done. There is a 
gentleman now in Dunoon — and they 
say he is a ferry great artist too — and he 
hass a schooner of sixty tons that I hef 
been in myself, and it wass just like a 
steamer below for the comfort of it. And 
when the boat is ready, I will get you 
ferry good sailors for her, that will know 
every bit of the coast from Loch-Indaal 
to the Butt of Lewis, and I will see that 
they are ferry cheap for you, for I hef 
plenty of work for them in the winter. 
But I wass no saying yet,” the old man 
added, “that you were right about com- 
ing to live in Borva. Stornoway is a 
good place to 'live in; and it is a fine 
harbor for repairs, if the boat was want- 
ing repairs.” 

“If she were, couldn’t we send her 
round to Stornoway ?” 

“But the people in Stornoway — it iss 
the people in Stornoway,” said Macken- 
zie, who was not going to give in with- 
out a grumble. 

Well, they did not fix on a site for the 
house that afternoon. Sheila did not 
make her appearance. Lavender kept 
continually turning and looking over the 


long undulations of rock and moorland ; 
and at length he said, “ Look here, John- 
ny, would you mind going on by your- 
selves ? I think I shall walk back to the 
house.” 

“What is keeping that foolish girl?” 
her father said impatiently. “ It is some- 
thing about the dinner now, as if any 
one wass particular about a dinner in an 
island like this, where you can expect 
nothing. But at Stornoway — oh yes, 
they hef many things there.” 

“But I want you to come and dine 
with us on board the Phoebe to-night, 
sir,” Johnny said. “It will be rather a 
lark, mind you : we make up a tight fit 
in that cabin. I wonder if Mrs. Laven- 
der \yould venture : do you think she 
would, sir?” 

“Oh no, not this evening, anyway,” 
said her father, “ for I know she will ex- 
pect you all to be up at the house this 
evening ; and what would be the use of 
tumbling about in the bay when you can 
be in a house. But it is ferry kind of 
you. Oh yes, to-morrow night, then, we 
will go down to the boat, but this night 
I know Sheila will be ferry sorry if you 
do not come to the house.” 

“Well, let’s go back now,” Johnny 
said, “and if we’ve time we might go 
down for our guns and have a try along 
the shore for an hour or so before the 
daylight goes. Fancy that chance at 
those wild-duck !” 

“Oh, but that is nothing,” Mackenzie 
said. “To-morrow you will come with 
me up to the loch, and there you will 
hef some shooting ; and in many other 
places I will show you you will hef plenty 
of shooting.” 

They had just got back to the house 
when they found Sheila coming out. 
She had, as her father supposed, been 
detained by her preparations for enter- 
taining their guests ; but now she was 
free until dinner-time, and so the whole 
party went down to the shore to pay a 
visit to the Phoebe and let Mackenzie 
have a look at the guns on board. Then 
they went up to the house and found the 
tall and grim keeper with the baby in his 
arms, while Scarlett and Mairi were put- 
ting the finishing touches on the gleam- 


264 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


ing white table and its show of steel and 
crystal. 

How strange it was to Sheila to sit at 
dinner there, and listen to her husband 
talking of boating and fishing and what 
not as he used to sit and talk in the old- 
en time to her father, on the summer 
evenings, on the high rocks over Borva- 
bost ! The interval between that time 
and this seemed to go clean out of her 
mind. And yet there must have been 
some interval, for he was looking older 
and sterner and much rougher about the 
face now, after being buffeted about by 
wind and rain and sun during that long 
and solitary stay in Jura. But it was 
very like the old times when they went 
into the little drawing-room, and when 
Mairi brought in the hot water and the 
whisky, the tobacco and the long pipes, 
when the old King of Borva sat himself 
down in his great chair by the table, and 
when Lavender came to Sheila and asked 
her if he should get out her music and 
open the piano for her. 

“Madam,” young Mosenberg said to 
her, “it is a long time since I heard one 
of your strange Gaelic songs.” 

“Perhaps you never heard this one,” 
Sheila said, and she began to sing the 
plaintive “Farewell to Glenshalloch.” 
Many a time, indeed, of late had she 
sung its simple and pathetic air as a sort 
of lullaby, perhaps because it was gentle, 
monotonous and melancholy, perhaps 
because there were lines here and there 
that she liked. Many a time had she 
sung— 

Sleep sound, my sweet babe, there is naught to alarm 
thee. 

The sons of the valley no power have to harm thee. 
I’ll sing thee to rest in the balloch untrodden. 

With a coronach sad for the slain of Culloden. 

But long before she had reached the 
end of it her father’s patience gave way, 
and he said, “ Sheila, we will hef no more 
of those teffies of songs ! We will hef 
a good song; and there is more than 
one of the gentlemen can sing a good 
song, and we do not wish to be always 
crying over the sorrows of other people. 
Now be a good lass, Sheila, and sing us 
a good cheerful song.” 

And Sheila, with great good-nature, 


suddenly struck a different key, and sang, 
with a spirit that delighted the old man, 

The standard on the braes o' Mar 
Is up and streaming rarely ; 

The gathering pipe on Lochnagar 
Is sounding lang and clearly ; 

The Highlandmen, from hill and glen. 

In martial hue, with bonnets blue, 

Wi’ belted plaids and burnished blades. 

Are coming late and early ! 

“Now, that is a better kind of song — 
that is a teffie of a good song,” Macken- 
zie cried, keeping time to the music with 
his right foot, as if he were a piper play- 
ing in front of his regiment. “Wass 
there anything like that in your country, 
Mr. Mosenberg?” 

“ I don’t know, sir,” said the lad meek- 
ly, “but if you like I will sing you one or 
two of our soldiers’ songs. They have 
plenty of fire in them, I think.” 

Certainly, Mackenzie had plenty of 
brilliant and cheerful and stirring music 
that evening, but that which pleased him 
most, doubtless, was to see, as all the 
world could see, the happiness of his 
good lass. Sheila, proud and glad, with 
a light on her face that had not been 
there for many a day, wanted to do 
everything at once to please and amuse 
her guests, and most of all to wait upon 
her husband ; and Lavender was so 
abashed by her sweet service and her 
simple ways that he could show his grat- 
itude only by some furtive and kindly 
touch of the hand as Sheila passed. It 
seemed to him she had never looked so 
beautiful, and never, indeed, since they 
left Stornoway together had he heard 
her quiet low laugh so full of enjoyment. 
What had he done, he asked himself, to 
deserve her confidence? for it was the 
hope in her proud and gentle eyes that 
gave that radiant brightness to her face. 
He did not know. He could not answer. 
Perhaps the forgiveness she had so free- 
ly and frankly tendered, and the confi- 
dence she now so clearly showed in him, 
sprang from no judgment or argument, 
but were only the natural fruit of an 
abounding and generous love. More 
than once that night he wished that 
Sheila could read the next half dozen 
years as though in some prophetic scroll, 
that he might show her how he would 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


endeavor to prove himself, if not worthy 
— for he could scarcely hope that — at 
least conscious of her great and unselfish 
affection, and as grateful for it as a man 
could be. 

They pushed their enjoyment to such 
a late hour of the night that when they 
discovered what time it was, Mackenzie 
would not allow one of them to venture 
out into the dark to find the path down 
to the yacht, and Duncan and Scarlett 
were forthwith called on to provide the 
belated guests with some more or less 
haphazard sleeping accommodation. 

“Mr. Mackenzie,” said Johnny, “I 
don’t mind a bit if I sleep on the floor. 
I’ve just had the jolliest night I ever 
spent in my life. Mosenberg, you’ll have 
to take the Phoebe back to Greenock by 
yourself : I shall never leave Borva any 
more.” 

“You will be sober in the morning, 
Mr. Eyre,” young Mosenberg said; but 
the remark was unjust, for Johnny’s en- 
thusiasm had not been produced by the 
old king’s whisky, potent as that was. 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE PRINCESS SHEILA. 

“I should like,” said Mrs. Edward 
Ingram, sitting down and contentedly 
folding her hands in her lap— “I should 
so much like, Edward, to have my own 
way for once, it would be so novel and 
so nice.” 

Her husband was busy with a whole 
lot of plans all stretched out before him, 
and with a pipe which he had some dif- 
ficulty in keeping alight. He did not 
even turn round as he answered, “You 
have your own way always. But you 
can’t expect to have mine also, you 
know.” 

“ Do you remember,” she said slowly, 
“anything your friend Sheila told you 
about your rudeness to people ? I wish, 
Edward, you would leave those ragged 
children and their school-houses for three 
minutes. Do ! I so much want to see 
some places when we go to Scotland, for 
who knows when we may be there again ? 
I have set my heart on the Braes of 


265 

Yarrow. And Loch Awe by moonlight. 
And the Pass of Glencoe—” 

“My dear child,” he said at last, turn- 
ing round in his chair, “how can we go 
to those places? Sheila says Oban on 
the fifteenth.” 

“ But what Sheila says isn’t an act of 
Parliament,” said the young American 
lady plaintively and patiently. “Why 
should you regulate all your movements 
by her ? You are always looking to the 
North : you are like the spires of the 
churches that are said to be always tell- 
ing us that heaven is close by the Pole 
Star.” 

“The information is inaccurate, my 
dear,” Ingram said, looking at his pipe, 
“ for the spires of the churches on the 
other side of the world point the other 
way. However, that does not matter. 
How do you propose to go rampaging 
all over Scotland, and still be at Oban 
on the fifteenth ?” 

“Telegraph to Mr. and Mrs. Lavender 
to come on to Edinburgh, and leave the 
trip to Lewis until we have seen those 
places. For, once we have got to that 
wild island, who knows when we shall 
return ? Now do, like a good boy. You 
know this new house of theirs will be all 
the drier in a month’s time. And their 
yacht will be all the more ship-shape. 
And both Sheila and her husband will 
be the better for coming down among 
civilized folks for a few weeks’ time — 
especially just now, when numbers of 
their friends must be in the Highlands ; 
and of course you get better attention at 
the hotels when the season is going on, 
and they have every preparation made ; 
and I am told the heather and fern on 
the hills look very fine in August ; and 
I am sure Mr. and Mrs. Lavender will 
enjoy it veiy much if we get a carriage 
somewhere and leave the railways alto- 
gether, and drive by ourselves all through 
the prettiest districts.” 

She wished to see the effect of her 
eloquence on him. It was peculiar. 
He put his pipe down and gravely re- 
peated these lines, with which she was 
abundantly familiar : 

Sez vather to I, “Jack, rin arter him, du !'* 

Sez I to vather, “ I'm darned if I du !” 


266 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


“You won’t?” she said. 

“The proposal comes too late. How 
can you expect Sheila to leave her new 
house, and that boy of hers, that occu- 
pies three-fourths of her letters, just at 
this time ? I think it was very kind of 
her, mind you, to come away down to 
Oban to meet us ; and Lavender, too, is 
giving up the time out of the best work- 
ing-season of the year. Bless you ! you 
will see far more beautiful things as we 
go from Oban to Lewis than any you 
have mentioned. For we shall probably 
cut down by Scarba and Jura before going 
up to Skye ; and then you will see the 
coast that you admired so much in Lav- 
ender’s pictures.” 

“Is the yacht a large one, Edward?” 
his wife asked, somewhat timidly. 

“Oh, big enough to take our party a 
dozen times over.” 

“Will she tumble about much, do you 
think ?” 

“ I don’t know,” Ingram said with an 
unkindly grin. “ But as you are a weak 
vessel, Lavender will watch the weather 
for you, and give it you as smooth as 
possible. Besides, look at the cleanliness 
and comfort of a smart yacht ! You are 
thinking of one of those Channel steam- 
ers, with their engines and oil.” 

“Let us hope for the best,” said his 
wife with a sigh. 

They not only hoped for it, but got it. 
When they left the Crinan and got on 
board the big steamer that was to take 
them up to Oban, all around them lay 
a sea of soft and shining blue, scarcely 
marred by a ripple. Here and there 
sharp crags that rose out of the luminous 
plain seemed almost black, but the farth- 
er islands lay soft and hazy in the heat, 
with the beautiful colors of August tint- 
ing the great masses of rock. As they 
steamed northward through the shining 
sea, new islands and new channels ap- 
peared until they came in sight of the 
open Atlantic, and that, too, was as calm 
and as still as a summer night. There 
was no white cloud in the blue vault of 
the sky, there was no crisp curl of a 
wave on the blue plain of the sea, but 
everywhere a clear, radiant, salt-smelling 
atmosphere, the drowsy haze of which 


was only visible when you looked at the 
distant islands and saw the fine and 
pearly veil of heat that was drawn over 
the soft colors of the hills. The sea- 
birds dipped and disappeared as the big 
boat churned its way onward. A white 
solan, far away by the shores of Mull, 
struck the water as he dived, and sent a 
jet of spray into the air. Colonsay and 
Oronsay became as faint clouds on the 
southern horizon, the jagged coast of 
Lome drew near. And then they went 
up through the Sound of Kerrara, and 
steamed into the broad and beautiful bay 
of Oban, and behold! here was Sheila 
on the pier, already waving a handker- 
chief to them, while her husband held 
her arm, lest in her excitement she should 
go too near the edge of the quay. 

“And where is the boat that we have 
heard so much of?” said Mrs. Kavanagh, 
when all the kissing and handshaking 
was over. 

“ There !” said Sheila, not without some 
shame-faced pride, pointing to a shapely 
schooner that lay out in the bay, with 
her white decks and tall spars shining in 
the afternoon sun. 

“And what do you call her?” asked 
Mrs. Kavanagh’s daughter. 

“We call her Princess Sheila said 
Lavender. “What do you think of the 
name ?” 

“You couldn’t have got a better,” In- 
gram said sententiously, and interposing 
as if it was not within his wife’s province 
to form an opinion of any sort. “And 
where is your father, Sheila ? In Borva ?” 

“Oh no, he is here,” the girl said with 
a smile. “ But the truth is, he has driven 
away to see some gentlemen he knows, 
to ask if he can have some grouse for 
you. He should have been back by this 
time.” 

“I would not hurry him, Sheila,” In- 
gram said gravely. “ He could not have 
gone on a more admirable errand. We 
must await his return with composure. 
In the mean time, Lavender, do make 
your fellows stop that man : he is taking 
away my wife’s trunk to some hotel or 
other.” 

The business of getting the luggage 
on board the yacht was entrusted to a 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


267 


couple of men whom Lavender left on 
shore, whereupon the newly-arrived trav- 
elers put off in a little pinnace and were 
conveyed to the side of the handsome 
schooner. When they were on board 
an eager exploration followed; and if 
Sheila could only have undertaken to 
vouch for the smoothness of the weather 
for the next month, Mrs. Ingram was 
ready to declare that at last she had dis- 
covered the most charming and beautiful 
and picturesque fashion of living known 
to civilized man. She was delighted with 
the little elegancies of the state-rooms ; 
she was delighted with the paintings on 
the under skylights, which had been done 
by Lavender’s own hand; she was de- 
lighted with the whiteness of the decks 
and the height of the tapering spars ; 
and she had no words for her admiration 
of the beautiful sweep of the bay, the 
striking ruins of the old castle at the 
point, the rugged hills rising behind the 
white houses, and out there in the west 
the noble panorama of mountain and 
island and sea. 

“ I am afraid, Mrs. Ingram,” Lavender 
said, “you will have cause to know Oban 
before we leave it. There is not a breath 
of wind to take us out of the bay.” 

“ I am content,” she said with a gracious 
calm. 

‘‘But we must get you up to Borva 
somehow. There it would not matter 
how long you were becalmed, for there 
is plenty to see about the island. But 
this is a trifle commonplace, you know.” 

“ I don’t think so at all. I am delight- 
ed with the place,” she said. ‘‘And so 
are you, Edward.” 

Ingram laughed. He knew she was 
daring him to contradict her. He pro- 
posed he should go ashore and buy a 
few lines with which they might fish for 
young saithe or lythe over the side of the 
yacht, but this project was stopped by the 
appearance of the King of Borva, who 
bore triumphant proof of the success of 
his mission in a brace of grouse held up 
in each hand as a small boat brought 
him out to the yacht. 

‘‘And I was seeing Mr. Hutcheson,” 
Mackenzie said to Lavender as he step- 
ped on board, ‘‘and he is a ferry good- 


natured man whatever, and he says if 
there is no wind at all he will let one of 
his steamers take the yacht up to Loch 
Sunart, and if there is a breeze at all we 
will get it there.” 

‘‘But why should we go in quest of a 
breeze?” Mrs. Ingram said petulantly. 

‘‘Why, mem,” said Mackenzie, taking 
the matter seriously, ‘‘you wass not think- 
ing we could sail a boat without wind ? 
But I am no sure that there will not be a 
breeze before night.” 

Mackenzie was right. As the evening 
wore on and the sun drooped in the west, 
the aspect of affairs changed somewhat, 
and there was now and again a sort of 
shiver apparent on the surface of the 
lake-like bay. When, indeed, the peo- 
ple on board came up on deck just be- 
fore dinner, they found a rather thunder- 
ous-looking sunset spreading over the 
sky. Into the clear saffron glory of the 
western sky some dark and massive pur- 
ple clouds had risen. The mountains 
of Mull had grown light and milk-like, 
and yet they seemed near. The glass- 
like bay began to move, and the black 
shadow of a ship that lay on the gleam- 
ing yellow plain began to tremble as the 
water cut lines of light across the re- 
flection of the masts. You could hear 
voices afar off. Under the ruins of the 
castle and along the curves of the coast 
the shadows of the water were a pure 
green, and the rocks were growing still 
more sharp and distinct in the gathering 
dusk. There was a cold smell of the 
sea in the air. And then swiftly the pale 
colors of the west waxed lurid and fierce, 
the mountains became of a glowing pur- 
ple, and then all the plain of the sea was 
dashed with a wild glare of crimson, while 
the walls of Dunolly grew black, and 
overhead the first scouts of the marshal- 
ing forces of the clouds came up in fly- 
ing shreds of gold and fire. 

‘‘Oh ay, we may hef a breeze the 
night,” Mackenzie said. 

“I hope we sha’n’t have a storm,” 
Mrs. Ingram said. 

‘‘A storm? Oh no, no storm at all. 
It will be a ferry good thing if the wind 
lasts till the morning.” 

Mackenzie was not at all sure that 


268 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


there would be storm enough, and went 
down to dinner with the others rather 
grumbling over the fineness of the weath- 
er. Indeed, when they came on deck 
again, later on in the night, even the 
slight breeze that he had hoped for 
seemed impossible. The night was per- 
fectly still. A few stars had come out 
overhead, and their light scarcely trem- 
bled on the smooth waters of the bay. A 
cold, fresh scent of sea-weed was about, 
but no wind. The orange lights in Oban 
burned pale and clear, the red and' green 
lamps of the steamers and yachts in the 
bay did not move. And when Mrs. In- 
gram came up to take Sheila forward to 
the bow of the boat, to sit down there 
and have a confidential talk with her, a 
clear and golden moon was rising over 
the sharp black ridge of Kerrara into the 
still and beautiful skies, and there was 
not a ripple of the water along the sides 
of the yacht to break the wonderful si- 
lence of the night. 

“My dear,” she said, “you have a 
beautiful place to live in.” 

“ But we do not live here,” Sheila said 
with a smile. “This is to me as far 
away from home as England can be to 
you when you think of America. When 
I came here for the first time I thought I 
had got into another world, and that I 
should never be able to get back again 
to the Lewis.” 

“And is the island you live in more 
beautiful than this place?” she asked, 
looking round on the calm sea, the lam- 
bent skies and the far mountains be- 
yond, which were gray and ghost-like in 
the pale glow of the moon. 

“ If you see our island on such a night 
as this, you will say it is the most beau- 
tiful place in the world. It is the winter- 
time that is bad, when we have rain and 
mist for weeks together. But after this 
year I think we shall spend all the win- 
ters in London, although my husband 
does not like to give up the shooting and 
the boating; and that is very good 
amusement for him when he is tired 
with his work.” 

“That island life certainly seems to 
agree with him,” said Mrs. Ingram, not 
daring even to hint that there was any 


further improvement in Sheila’s hus- 
band than that of mere health : “I have 
never seen him look so well and strong. 
I scarcely recognized him on the pier, he 
was so brown; and — and — and I think 
his sailor-clothes suit him so well. They 
are a little rough, you know : indeed, I 
have been wondering whether you made 
them yourself.” 

Sheila laughed : “I have seen you 
look at them. No, I did not make them. 
But the cloth, that was made on the isl- 
and, and it is very good cloth whatever.” 

“You see what a bad imitation of your 
costume I am compelled to wear. Ed- 
ward would have it, you know. I think 
he’d like me to speak like you, if I could 
manage it.” 

“ Oh no, I am sure he would not like 
that,” Sheila said, “for many a time he 
used to correct me ; and when he first 
came to the island I was very much 
ashamed, and sometimes angry with 
him.” 

“But I suppose you got accustomed to 
his putting everybody right?” said Mr. 
Ingram’s wife with a smile. 

“ He was always a very good friend to 
me,” Sheila said simply. 

“Yes, and I think he is now,” said her 
companion, taking the girl’s hand and 
forcing herself to say something of that 
which lay at her heart, and which had 
been struggling for utterance during all 
this beating about the bush. “ I am sure 
you could not have a better friend than 
he is ; and if you only knew how pleased 
we both are to find you so well and so 
happy — ” 

Sheila saw the great embarrassment 
in her companion’s face, and she knew 
the good feeling that had driven her to 
this stammering confession. “ It is very 
kind of you,” she said gently. “I am 
very happy : yes, I do not think I have 
anything more to wish for in the world,” 

There was no embarrassment in her 
manner as she made this simple avowal, 
her face was clear and calm in the moon- 
light, and her eyes were looking some- 
what distantly at the sea and the island 
near. Her husband came forward with 
a light shawl and put it round her shoul- 
ders. She took his hand and for a mo- 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


269 


ment pressed it to her lips. Then he 
went back to where Ingram and old 
Mackenzie were smoking, and the two 
women were left to their confidences. 
Mrs. Kavanagh had gone below. 

What was this great noise next morn- 
ing of the rattling of chains and the flap- 
ping of canvas overhead ? There was a 
slight motion in the boat and a plash- 
ing of water around her sides. Was the 
Princess Sheila getting under weigh ? 

The various noises ceased, so also did 
the rolling of the vessel, and apparently 
all was silent and motionless again. 
But when the ladies had dressed, and 
got up on deck, behold they were in a 
new world ! All around them were the 
blue waters of Loch Linnhe, lit up by 
the brilliant sunshine of the morning. 
A light breeze was just filling the great 
white sails, and the yacht, heeling over 
slightly, was cutting her placid way 
through the lapping waves. How keen 
was the fresh smell of the air ! Sea-gulls 
were swooping down and around the tall 
masts : over there the green island of 
Lismore lay bright in the sunshine ; the 
lonely hills of Morven and the moun- 
tains of Mull had a thousand shades 
of color growing on their massive shoul- 
ders and slopes ; the ruins of Duart Cas- 
tle, out at the point, seemed too fair and 
picturesque to be associated with dark 
legends of blood. Were these faint 
specks in the south the far islands of 
Colonsay and Oronsay ? Lavender 
brought his glass to Mrs. Ingram, and, 
with many apologies to all the ladies for 
having woke them up so soon, bade her 
watch the flight of two herons making 
in for the mouth of Loch Etive. 

They had postponed for the present 
that southward trip to Jura. The glass 
was still rising, and the appearance of 
the weather rendered it doubtful whether 
they might have wind enough to make 
such a cruise anything but tedious. They 
had taken advantage of this light breeze 
in the morning to weigh anchor and 
stand across for the Sound of Mull : if it 
held out, they would at least reach To- 
bermony, and take their last look at a 
town before rounding Ardnamurchan and 
making for the wild solitudes of Skye. 


“Well, Cis,” Ingram said to his wife 
as he busied himself with a certain long 
fishing-line, “ what do >you think of the 
Western Highlands ?” 

“Why did you not tell me of these 
places before ?” she said rather absently, 
for the mere height of the mountains 
along the Sound of Mull — the soft green 
woods leading up to the great bare shoul- 
ders of purple and gray and brown above 
— seemed to draw away one’s eyes and 
thoughts from surrounding objects. 

“I have, often. But what is the use 
of telling ?” 

“ It is the most wonderful place I have 
ever seen,” she said. “ It is so beautiful 
and so desolate at the same time. What 
lovely colors there are everywhere — on 
the sea, and on the shores there and up 
the hills — and everything is so bright 
and gleaming! But no one seems to 
live here. I suppose you couldn’t : the 
loneliness of the mountains and the sea 
would kill you.” 

“My dear child, these are town-bred 
fancies,” he said in his usual calm and 
carelessly sententious manner. “ If you 
lived there, you would have plenty to do 
besides looking at the hills and the sea. 
You would be glad of a fine day to let 
you go out and get some fish or go up 
the hills and get some blackcock for 
your dinner ; and you would not get sad 
by looking at fine colors, as town-folks 
do. Do you think Lavender and Sheila 
spend their time in mooning up in that 
island of theirs ? and that, I can tell you, 
is a trifle more remote and wild than this 
is. They’ve got their work to do, and 
when that is done they feel comfortable 
and secure in a well-built house, and 
fairly pleased with themselves that they 
have earned some rest and amusement. 
I dare say if you built a cottage over 
there, and did nothing but look at the 
sea and the hills and the sky at night, 
you would very soon drown yourself. I 
suppose if a man were to give himself up 
for three months to thinking of the first 
formation of the world, and the condi- 
tion of affairs before that happened, and 
the puzzle about how the materials ever 
came to be there, he would grow mad. 
But few people luckily have the chance 


270 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


of trying. They’ve got their bread to 
earn : if they haven’t, they’re bent on 
killing something or other — foxes, grouse, 
deer, and what not — and they don’t both- 
er about the stars, or what lies just out- 
side the region of the stars. When I 
find myself getting miserable about the 
size of a mountain, or the question as to 
how and when it came there, I know that 
it is time to eat something. I think 
breakfast is ready, Cis. Do you think 
you have the nerve to cut this hook out 
of my fingers ? and then we can go 
below.” 

She gave a little scream and started 
up. Two drops of blood had fallen on 
Lavender’s white decks. 

“ No, I see you can’t,” he said. “ Open 
this knife and I will dig it out myself. 
Bless the girl ! are you going to faint be- 
cause I have scratched my finger ?” 

Lavender, however, had to be called 
in to help, and while the surgical opera- 
tion was going forward Mrs. Ingram 
said, “You see we have got townsfolks 
hands as yet. I suppose they will get 
to be leather by and by. I am sure I 
don’t know how Mrs. Lavender can do 
those things about a boat with the tiny 
little hands she has.” 

“Yes, Sheila has small hands, hasn’t 
she ?” Lavender said as he bound up his 
friend’s finger; “but then she makes up 
for that by the bigness of her heart.” 

It was a pretty and kindly speech, and 
it pleased Mrs. Ingram, though Sheila 
did not hear it. Then, when the doctor- 
ing was over, they all went below for 
breakfast, and an odor of fish and ham 
and eggs and coffee prevailed through- 
out the yacht. 

“ I have quite fallen in love with this 
manner of life,” Mrs. Ingram said. 
“ But, tell me, is it always as pleasant as 
this ? Do you always have those blue 
seas around you, and green shores ? Are 
the sails always white in the sunlight ?” 

There was a dead silence. 

“Well, I would not say,” Mackenzie 
observed seriously, as no one else would 
take up the question — ■“ I would not say 
it is always ferry good weather off this 
coast — oh no, I would not say that — for 
if there wass no rain, what would the 


cattle do, and the streams ? — they would 
not hef a pool left in them. Oh yes, 
there is rain sometimes, but you cannot 
always be sailing about, and when there 
will- be rain you will hef your things to 
attend to in-doors. And there is always 
plenty of good weather if you wass want- 
ing to tek a trip round the islands or 
down to Oban — oh yes, there is no fear 
of that ; and it will be a ferry good coast 
whatever for the harbor, and there is 
always some place you can put into if it 
wass coming on rough, only you must 
know the coast and the lie of the islands 
and the rocks about the harbors. And 
you would learn it ferry soon. There is 
Sheila there : there is no one in the Lewis 
will know more of the channels in Loch 
Roag than she does — not one, I can say 
that; and when you go farther away, 
then you must tek some one with you 
who wass well acquaint with the coast. 
If you wass thinking of having a ya«ht, 
Mr. Ingram, there is one I hef heard of 
just now in Rothesay that is for sale, and 
she is a ferry good boat, but not so big 
as this one.” 

“ I think we’ll wait till my wife knows 
more about it, Mr. Mackenzie,” Ingram 
said. “Wait till she gets round Ardna- 
murchan, and has crossed the Minch, 
and has got the fine Atlantic swell as 
you run in to Borvabost.” 

“Edward, you frighten me,” his wife 
said : “I was beginning to give myself 
courage.” 

“But it is mere nonsense,” cried Mac- 
kenzie impatiently. “Kott pless me! 
there is no chance of your being ill in 
this fine weather ; and if you had a boat 
of your own, you would ferry soon get 
accustomed to the weather — oh, ferry 
soon indeed — and you would hef no 
more fear of the water than Sheila has.” 

“Sheila has far too little fear of the 
water,” her husband said. 

“ Indeed, and that is true,” said her 
father; “and it is not right that a young 
lass should go about by herself in a 
boat.” 

“But you know very well, papa, that 
I never do that now.” 

“Oh, you do not do it now,” grumbled 
Mackenzie — “no, you do not do it now. 


A PRINCESS OF THULE . 


271 


But some day you will forget when there 
is something to be done, and you will 
run a great danger, Sheila.” 

“ But she has promised never to go out 
by herself: haven’t you, Sheila?” her 
husband said. 

“ I did : I promised that to you. And 
I have never been out since by myself.” 

‘‘Well, don’t forget, Sheila,” said her 
father, not very sure but that some sud- 
den occasion might tempt the girl to her 
old deeds of recklessness. 

The two American ladies had little to 
fear. The Hebrides received them with 
fair sunshine and smooth seas, and all 
the day long their occupation was but to 
watch the wild birds flying from island 
to island, and mark the gliding by of the 
beautiful coasts, and listen to the light 
rushing of the waves as the fresh sea- 
breeze flew through the rigging. And 
Sheila was proud to teach them some- 
thing of the mystery of sailing a small 
craft, and would give them the tiller 
sometimes, while her eye, as clear and 
keen as her father’s, kept watch and 
ward over the shapely vessel that was 
making for the northern seas. One 
evening she said to her friends, ‘‘Do you 
see that point that runs out on this side 
cf the small islands ? Round that we 
enter Loch Roag.” 

The last pale light of the sun was 
shining along the houses of Borvabost 
as the Princess Sheila passed. The peo- 
ple there had made out the yacht long 
ere she came close to land, and Macken- 
zie knew that twenty eager scouts would 
fly to tell the news to Scarlett and Dun- 
can, so that ample preparation would be 
made in the newly-finished house down 
by the sea. The wind, however, had 
almost died away, and they were a long 
time getting into Loch Roag in this clear 
twilight. They who were making their 
first visit to Sheila’s island sat contented- 
ly enough on deck, however, amazed and 
bewildered by the beauty of the scene 
around them. For now the sun had long 
sunk, but there was a glow all over the 
heavens, and only in the far east did the 
yellow stars begin to glimmer over the 
dark plain of the loch. Mealasabhal, 
Suainabahl, Cracabahl lifted their grand 
18 


shoulders and peak into this wondrous 
sky, and stood dark and clear there, with 
the silence of the sea around them. As 
the night came on the yellow stars grew 
more intense overhead, but the lambent 
glow in the north did not pale. They 
entered a small bay. Up there on a 
plateau of the rocks stood a long, low 
house, with all its windows gleaming in 
the dusk. The pinnace was put off from 
the yacht ; in the strange silence of the 
night the ripples plashed around her 
prow ; her oars struck fire in the water 
as the men rowed in to the land. And 
then, as Sheila’s guests made their way 
up to the house, and when they reached 
the verandah and turned to look at the sea 
and the loch and the far mountains op- 
posite, they beheld the clear and golden 
sickle of the moon rising from behind 
the black outline of Suainabhal into the 
soft and violet skies. As the yellow 
moon rose in the south a pathway of 
gold began to tremble on Loch Roag, 
and they could see the white curve of 
sand around the bay. The air was sweet 
with the cold smell of the sea. There 
was a murmur of the far Atlantic all 
around the silent coast. 

It was the old familiar picture that had 
charmed the imagination of Sheila’s first 
and only lover, when as yet she was to 
him as some fair and wonderful princess 
living in a lonely island and clothed 
round about with the glamour of old 
legends and stories of the sea. Was 
she any longer this strange sea-princess, 
with dreams in her eyes and the mystery 
of the night and the stars written in her 
beautiful face ? Or was she to him now, 
what all the world long ago perceived 
her to be, a tender wife, a faithful com- 
panion and a true and loyal-hearted wo- 
man ? Sheila walked quietly into the 
house : there was something there for 
her friends to see, and with a great pride 
and gentleness and gladness Scarlett was 
despatched on a particular errand. The 
old King of Borva was still down at the 
yacht, looking after the landing of certain 
small articles of luggage. Duncan had 
come forward to Ingram and said, ‘‘And 
are you ferry well, sir ?” and Mairi, come 
down from Mackenzie’s house, had done 


■ 


272 


A PRINCESS OF THULE. 


the same. Then there was a wild squeal 
of the pipes in the long apartment where 
supper was laid, the unearthly gather- 
ing cry of -a clan, until Sheila’s husband 
•dashed into the place and threatened to 
throw John into the sea if he did not 
hold his peace. John was offended, and 
would probably have gone up the hill- 
side and in revenge played “Mackrim- 
mon shall no more return,” only that he 


knew the irate old King of Borva would, 
in such a case, literally fulfill the threat 
that had been lightly uttered by his son- 
in-law. In another room, where two or 
three women were together, one of them 
suddenly took both of Sheila’s hands in 
hers and said, with a great look of kind- 
ness in her eyes, “My dear, I can believe 
now what you told me that night at 
Oban.” 



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